Faculty of Medicine and Health, Örebro university, Örebro, SE-701 82, Sweden.
Department of Surgical and Perioperative Sciences, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
BMC Emerg Med. 2024 Oct 17;24(1):195. doi: 10.1186/s12873-024-01105-8.
Disaster responders are exposed to several physical and mental health risks. This study aimed to describe self-care strategies used by disaster responders after the earthquake in Syria and eastern Turkey in February 2023.
A study specific web-based questionnaire survey was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data according to a convergent mixed methods approach. Data from 252 disaster responders responding to the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria were analyzed using both descriptive and analytical statistics and summative content analysis of free-text answers. Data were collected in March to July, 2023.
The most used self-care strategies included resting, social support from colleagues in the field, extra intake of food or drink, and intake of medicines. The recovery strategies varied due to previous disaster response experience, indicating that supportive self-care strategies can be developed or learned.
Given the extreme conditions and limited possibilities of external support, sufficient self-care is an essential competence among disaster responders. Self-care strategies can be both external processed such as intake of medicines, social support from others, and internal processes such as personal reflection. Providing oneself with self-care activities seems to be a skill developed with increasing experience supported by pre-deployment training. Therefore, to enhance resilience, self-care strategies should be encompassed in pre-disaster response training.
灾害应对人员面临着多种身心健康风险。本研究旨在描述 2023 年 2 月叙利亚和土耳其东部地震后灾害应对人员使用的自我保健策略。
采用特定于研究的基于网络的问卷调查，根据收敛混合方法收集定量和定性数据。对来自土耳其和叙利亚地震灾区的 252 名灾害应对人员的数据进行了分析，采用描述性和分析性统计以及自由文本答案的总结性内容分析。数据收集于 2023 年 3 月至 7 月。
最常用的自我保健策略包括休息、来自现场同事的社会支持、额外摄入食物或饮料以及服用药物。由于有以前的灾害应对经验，恢复策略有所不同，这表明可以开发或学习支持性的自我保健策略。
鉴于极端条件和外部支持的有限可能性，充足的自我保健是灾害应对人员的一项基本能力。自我保健策略既可以是外部处理，如服用药物、从他人那里获得社会支持，也可以是内部处理，如个人反思。提供自我保健活动似乎是一种随着部署前培训的增加而发展起来的技能。因此，为了增强弹性，应将自我保健策略纳入灾害应对前的培训中。
