Source avec lien : BMJ Open, 12(12). 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-063899
Cette étude visait à explorer les obstacles au contrôle de la maladie perçus par les travailleurs de la santé de première ligne (HCW) travaillant dans des contextes communautaires pendant la pandémie de COVID-19 en Corée du Sud.
Objective This study aimed to explore barriers to disease control perceived by frontline healthcare workers (HCWs) working in community settings during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea.Design A qualitative study was conducted using semistructured focus group interviews. All interviews were conducted in Korean on Zoom between October and November 2020, audio-recorded and transcribed for reflexive thematic analysis.Setting All participants were working in Gyeonggi-do, the most populous province in South Korea. The province had the second-highest COVID-19 infection rates at the time of the interview.Participants Participants serving as HCWs in Gyeonggi Province were eligible to participate in the study. A total of 20 HCWs comprised of public health doctors and professional epidemiologists agreed to participate in the study.Results Four themes were generated. Each theme described how these barriers affected a disease control process: (1) ‘uncooperative public and unprepared community health centre’ delayed the investigation of newly diagnosed COVID-19 cases; (2) ‘uncoordinated disease control system’ impeded the collection and analysis of digital data; (3) ‘the gap between responsibilities and capabilities’ hindered the classification of close and casual contacts; and (4) ‘conflicts with persons who have different interests and priorities’ hampered epidemiological decision-making.Conclusions Our study found that frontline HCWs experienced various challenges disrupting their work performance to control COVID-19. We provide several recommendations, such as providing HCWs with systematic interview skill training, strengthening patient information security systems, providing sufficient resources, securing a regular workforce, collecting the field experiences of HCWs, implementing task-shifting, and having regular stakeholder meetings. These strategies may promote work capacity among the frontline HCWs and subsequently strengthen emergency preparedness.Data are available upon reasonable request. The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author (MY). The data are not publicly available due to them containing information that could compromise research participant privacy/consent.