After the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak 17 years ago, Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) turned informal peer support given to staff on the front line into a Staff Support Staff (3S) programme.
Over the years, the programme has grown, training several hundred hospital staff in areas such as recognising and responding to early signs of mental health issues.
So when the coronavirus outbreak became more widespread in February, the programme’s executive committee, led by chairman Habeebul Rahman, started to ramp up support measures in anticipation of increased stress and burnout among staff.
A total of 238 people in Singapore were infected with Sars in 2003, and 33 of them died. The number of coronavirus cases here has crossed 1,100 and is set to rise.
The 3S programme expected a significant increase in the number of staff requiring mental health support, so it was a pleasant surprise to the team that the rise was not as large as had been expected, said Dr Habeebul, even with the many operational changes that have taken place at TTSH and National Centre for Infectious Diseases over the last three months.
“Staff do feel stressed, but they are doing a tremendous job managing as well as they can,” he said.
At Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH), a similar Peers Around Lending Support (Pals) programme has seen a slight increase in the number of staff requiring individual help, said the hospital’s head of psychological medicine, Dr Goh Kah Hong. “This is largely due to the increased demand at work in terms of fluidity of events and new workflows, as well as in their personal lives.”
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Source: The Straits Times, 6 April 2020