Kelly Leonard: Team Lead Paediatric Physiotherapy, Midlands, UK
POPSUGAR: Can you describe your prepandemic work life and how it changed during the pandemic?
Kelly Leonard: I was a clinical lead paediatric physiotherapists working with children of various ages and disabilities. I was due to start a new job on 1 April, but as we went into lockdown, the new team would have been without a team leader for two weeks, so I stepped up early.
The whole team's life changed because of the pandemic. We had to segment our caseloads and step up our virtual contacts with patients. There was such a feeling of uncertainty about what was happening and some of the team were redeployed to other teams to help. It was a very high-stress situation and hard to navigate as a new team leader — I didn't really know the team members before the pandemic, so being responsible for their mental health needs and ensuring the paediatric physiotherapy service was able to provide what it needed to, was a huge challenge.
PS: How does being a health worker impact your mental health in a positive and/or negative way, and has this changed during the pandemic?
KL: Being a health care professional, and a paediatric physiotherapist, gives you a sense of purpose. We help children to try to fulfil the best functional ability that they can, provide support to the families, and are the gateway to other services. We are the advocates for these children and their families. This is empowering to us and we facilitate empowerment.
This pandemic has made that job harder. We are not face to face and hands on with most of the children as we would usually be. We like to get a rapport with children so they trust us to be able to assess them and this is very difficult over the virtual world. It is frustrating. We know the power of touch and movement, and how it can ground our patients and ourselves; it is a reinforcement of safety. I have been struggling. I find working from home isolating. Thankfully, I have my family with me, but there is a lot of pressure to ensure they are okay, too.
PS: In my experience, a lot of health workers don't believe they require (or perhaps, deserve) psychological support or assistance for "simply doing their jobs." What is your experience with this, and has your perspective changed since the pandemic began?
"Yes, we are all simply doing our jobs, but, like in the military, when you sign on the dotted line, you sign up to the ideology that you are ready for anything."
KL: I was in the military before becoming a physio. I have had to overcome major life changes and it has highlighted to me that psychological assistance is invaluable. Yes, we are all simply doing our jobs, but, like in the military, when you sign on the dotted line, you sign up to the ideology that you are ready for anything. There is nothing "simple" about our jobs. I have not been on the frontline of the NHS . . . (but) those who were there, those that had to make those life and death decisions, had to watch scared people come in, comforted them and even held their hand as they passed away — they were doing more than simply a job, and our jobs are never just that, healthcare professionals take pride in giving more.
In the military, you know you will have to go away, you know your life could be on the line, but as a healthcare worker it is unusual to go to work and think that you could get sick and never see your family again. Sometimes people can be too proud or feel that it is a sign of weakness to show you are struggling. It can be lonely and it's not healthy. Healthcare workers have been through the mill recently, and it is important for family and friends to look past the "I'm fine" exterior and ask how they are again. My advice to those workers is to talk, to take the courageous step and talk about what you have seen, experienced, and feared.
PS: Do you think the work you have done during pandemic will affect you long-term, psychologically, or in a different way than your pre-covid workload did?
KL: I have struggled with being isolated from work and training but other than that I don't necessarily feel that I will be affected long term by this. I have already been receiving help through Help For Heroes, so I have coping mechanisms and am working on continuing to try to implement those. I have also passed many mental health support links on to my team, and the Field Guide to Self-Care resources from Help For Heroes, which is created by veterans who've been through trauma and has been packaged up to help NHS and frontline workers.