Tag: healthcare workers

Covid: Vaccination of Scotland’s healthcare workers offers some protection against transmission to their household contacts

A study of all healthcare workers employed by the NHS in Scotland and their households, shows that the rate of infection with Covid-19 for people that live with healthcare workers is at least 30% lower when the worker has been vaccinated mostly with a single dose.

Since household members of healthcare workers can also be infected via other people (not just via the healthcare worker they live with), this 30% relative risk reduction is an underestimate of the ‘true’ effect of vaccination on transmission.

Research led by Public Health Scotland and the University of Glasgow (with contributions from researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Glasgow Caledonian University, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Strathclyde) involved over 300,000 people in total and ran between 8 December 2020 and 3 March 2021.

The study, using record linkage, compared cases of Covid-19 and hospitalisations due to Covid-19 in household members of both vaccinated, and unvaccinated health care workers.

Where healthcare workers had received a second dose of the vaccine at least 14 days before, their household members had a rate of Covid-19 which was at least 54% lower than household members where healthcare workers had not been vaccinated.

While the study was not designed to examine the uptake of vaccination among healthcare workers, current work does suggest that at least some patient facing healthcare workers, particularly younger staff and those not in high exposure roles, may not have been vaccinated yet.

PHS hope that these findings would give them extra encouragement to be vaccinated, as it suggests that the vaccine offers protection not only to themselves but also to their close contacts. Any patient-facing healthcare worker who has not yet been vaccinated should contact their local health board.

Public Health Scotland will be publishing more definitive results on vaccination uptake in patient-facing healthcare workers on our daily dashboard later today (Friday 12 March).

Dr Diane Stockton, PHS Lead for COVID-19 Vaccination Surveillance Programme, said: “The results from this study as part of our vaccine effectiveness work, are very encouraging because it suggests that the vaccine helps prevent people from passing on the virus to others – something that has been suspected but hasn’t previously been shown. 

“Despite this good news, it is important to remember that infection prevention and control practices in healthcare settings remain of paramount importance, as do the mitigations to prevent spread in our daily lives. The risk of transmission did not go down to zero after the healthcare worker was vaccinated.

“As Scotland continues to deliver its national Covid-19 vaccination programme, this study does give one more reason why everyone invited to have a vaccine should take up the offer, as not only will it help protect them from COVID-19, but it will help protect the people close to them.”

Dr David McAllister, University of Glasgow said: “Our study has important implications for informing vaccination strategies. The JCVI in the United Kingdom recently commented on the lack of real-world evidence evaluating the role of vaccination programmes on transmission.

“We provide the first direct evidence that vaccinating individuals working in high-exposure settings reduces the risk to their close contacts – members of their households. Our work will also be of interest to modellers, as it can be used to inform their predictions about future rates of COVID-19 in the community.”

Getting help FAST

“This second wave is far, far worse than the first, because we now know what is coming” – anonymous health worker, who along with her team, and thousands of other NHS workers are questioning if they can do it again.

When friends and family on the NHS frontline began suffering severely with COVID-related stress and trauma earlier in the year, a group of over 30 professional complementary practitioners came together to set up FAST (Frontline Assistance for Stress and Trauma).

This voluntary team have worked selflessly through lockdown and now beyond into the second wave, providing a free, online support service to help all UK based healthcare and emergency workers overcome pandemic stress. Their confidential service uses EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) ‘tapping’ therapy – a powerful, cutting edge tool you can use anywhere, at any time.

For many of the healthcare workers, it was the first time they had tried any complementary therapy, but the results with EFT have been transformative (and eye-opening for many of the nurses and doctors). So far, FAST has provided over 300 sessions across the UK, with wholly positive results. 

Up to now the FAST team have volunteered their time, skills, and expertise, raising simply for their basic set up and ongoing running costs.  However, now FAST needs to fundraise so they can continue to offer their free service to every UK healthcare worker who needs their support.

As an anonymous hospital GP explains: “Before my FAST experience I was off the rating out of 10. It was 1000. In my first session I saw a change down to 3/10 and it has not gone back up.

“I find the techniques very functional, with real life relevance and applicable, which results in a positive impact in my ability to cope. I wanted to thank you for your incredible compassion and professionalism with me. All of you are so kind to donate your time and expertise to people like us and of course we can never thank you enough for this”.

EFT is not offered on the NHS – yet. Once considered a fringe therapy, EFT now has an impressive amount of scientific research to back it up. FAST believes it’s a matter of time until EFT is NICE recognised, but until then the team is committed to making EFT accessible by continuing to offer their service free of charge to our selfless front-liners for as long as they need to reach out to access  support.

“We are now seeing evidence of ongoing mental health challenges, including emerging signs of PTSD amongst NHS workers, and demand for our FAST service is growing. With the predicted second wave upon us, the impact of COVID on our brilliant healthcare workers is only going to increase” says Wendy Power Stoten, founder of FAST.

“For six months FAST has proven its super efficiency, EFTs incredible effectiveness, and we, the voluntary FAST team, have grown our expertise in Covid-19 related issues”, continues Wendy.

FAST needs to be here for as long as the devastation and destruction to mental health that Covid-19 has created remains and has launched a fundraising campaign to raise £8000 to keep this vital service going.

College calls for task force to assess COVID-19 impact on healthcare workers

The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh has said that in order to maintain patient safety in the NHS, Scotland’s healthcare workers must be protected.

The College is calling for the Scottish Government to set up a task force, to assess the short, medium and long term health and wellbeing impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers.

The remit of the task force should include investigating whether adequate resources – especially time, staff and equipment – are available to maintain service activity, whether related to COVID-19 or not, taking into account the significant clinical demands of infection control, increased patient demand and different working practices during the pandemic.

The impact of the pandemic on The Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act – which was passed in 2019 to ensure staffing levels that provide safe, high quality health and care services – must also be examined.

The College’s call comes on World Patient Safety Day (17 September), which has a slogan this year of “safe health workers, safe patients”. The campaign seeks to highlight and recognise health workers’ efforts to provide safe healthcare every day for their patients in the UK and around the world.

In October 2019, before the pandemic, 69% of the 8,656 doctors who responded to the UK annual physicians’ census that said that working conditions had affected their morale. Morale at work is a vital part of anybody’s wellbeing.

The College is also using World Patient Safety day to highlight the importance of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), which are actions, apart from getting vaccinated and taking medicine, that people and communities can take to help slow the spread of coronavirus. This includes ensuring that everyone keeps their hands clean, and using a tissue or one’s elbow to catch coughs and sneezes.

Professor Angela Thomas, Acting President of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has been, and continues to be, a challenging period for healthcare workers.

“They have each played their vital part in helping the NHS manage the pandemic, sometimes at the expense of their own personal wellbeing and professional development.

“The College has helped support healthcare workers through our COVID-19 hub and webinars, which provide free access to online wellbeing and support, advice, guidelines, research and updates.

“But at this juncture, our thoughts must turn to how we can support the profession to continue the fight against COVID-19, while protecting their time to train, time to research and time to develop their knowledge and skills.

“There must be recognition from government that the people who care for the nation’s health – our healthcare workers – must themselves be cared for, in terms of their physical and emotional wellbeing.

“We’re also using World Patient Safety day to highlight the importance of personal and respiratory hygiene as measures to help stop the spread of coronavirus. This is vital particularly given the recent rise in COVID-19 infections over recent weeks.”

Read Focus on Physicians: 2018–19 Census here.