Emotional Dissonance and Psychological Burnout on Role Performance among COVID-19 Frontline Healthcare Workers (Published)
A sporadic novel corona virus disease, COVID-19 was first diagnosed in humans in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Since this unprecedented occurrence, COVID-19 has become a global pandemic leading to short- and long-term psychological ill-health to people from all walks of life. In this situational framework, patients and front-line healthcare workers have become the most vulnerable. The main aim of the study was to explore emotional dissonance and psychological burnout on role performance of COVID-19 frontline healthcare workers in Busia County, Kenya. Cross-sectional research design was employed. A standardized set of questionnaire was used to quantify the data. For this study, the researchers adopted multi-stage sampling technique to collect the data from the frontline healthcare workers in selected public hospitals in Busia County. The collected data were analyzed with multivariate regression analysis while qualitative findings were transcribed under themes.The findings show that emotional dissonance had an influence on role performance of frontline HCWs since the results are statistically significant. Males were more likely to experience emotional dissonance as opposed to females. Conversely, the findings revealed that psychological burnout had an insignificant relationship with role performance. Probably the sample size was small or the test items failed to meet the assumptions of the cultural orientation of the majority of the participants in the study. The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic might have conflicted with the Healthcare Workers calling and professional orientation. Most frontline healthcare workers in hospitals had not received adequate psychotherapy in preparation for COVID-19. Emotional dissonance seems more (certainly-delete) a consequence of unprecedented infection. Certainly Healthcare Workers obligation to save life might have been frustrated leading to exaggerated emotional dissonance and decline in performance output. Knowledge levels about COVID (have-delete) proved to have massive impact on severity and susceptibility of Healthcare Workers.There is need to bridge the gap in the knowledge levels, help improve on the understanding on how to freely handle the pandemic. Call for bridging the gaps in training of healthcare workers to overcome the fear that comes with knowledge of COVID-19 adversities. Intensified counselling and psychosocial support to HealthCare Workers and community sensitisation. Further research on home-based care since it has proven to be affordable alternative to hospital care or isolation.
Keywords: COVID-19, Role Performance, emotional dissonance, frontline healthcare workers, psychological burnout