Speaker: James C. West, M.D.
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented demand on healthcare workers, with demand surges straining resources and challenging workers ability to cope with large numbers of seriously ill patients, many of whom die in their care. The efforts of healthcare workers have been described using military terms such as “battle” and “combat.” Military combat and operational stress control, or COSC, offers lessons to guide efforts to support healthcare workers. Combat and operational stress control recognizes responses to extreme events as occurring along a continuum of expectable distress responses, health risk behaviors, and psychiatric illness. Interventions in COSC focus on the domains of self-help, peer support, organizational support and leadership interventions, and screening and referral to treatment to restore distressed individuals to a higher level of function and enable them to continue their necessary work. COSC applies a lifecycle approach through processes of preparation, sustainment, and recovery and reintegration in managing stress. Principles of combat and operational stress control can be useful in sustaining healthcare workers through the current crisis.
Webinar Materials:
- Sustaining the Healthcare Workforce in the COVID Era (PowerPoint)
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
James C. West, M.D.
Dr. West is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and a Scientist at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. He earned his M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School. Dr. West is board-certified in psychiatry and a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He currently serves on the APA Committee on the Psychiatric Dimensions of Disaster.
