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Like many in the health service, I now spend the whole of my working day on COVID-19. For those of us in health informatics this is a strange time. We got into this field to help improve and maintain the quality of care our organisations provide.
We now get asked to collate numbers on positive test results, numbers of patients in ITU beds and charts of daily deaths. The pressure to produce timely accurate figures is immense and comes at a time when we're already under stress from our normal ways of working being upended
At this unusual time, if you're working in health informatics or coding, take time to look out for your colleagues and yourself. Ask "are you ok?". Ask *yourself* if you're ok, and seek out support if you need it. You may not pull on a mask every day but you're on the frontline.
This is a mass casualty situation, and collating the statistics can be traumatic in the same way that rescuers working in the aftermath of an incident can be affected by what they see and do. Us number crunchers tend to disregard this and think the post-event help isn't for us.
There will be data on COVID-19 patients going across our desks for many months to come. It will be scary, stressful and often painfully close to home. Find those post-incident support services and don't let anyone tell you they're just for patient-facing staff. You need them too.
I've got experience of both working through the data from major incidents and being a first responder on scene after tragic deaths and honestly, poring over the accounts of others' attempts to save lives to get my data points affected me more and caused me to need to get help.
In short, look after yourselves, look after colleagues. Talk, for goodness' sake TALK if you don't feel 'right', to trusted friends and family. Use your organisation's support mechanisms. Don't underestimate the effect this might have on you as a health information professional.
