{"title":"Self-care strategies used by disaster responders after the 2023 earthquake in Turkey and Syria: a mixed methods study.","authors":"Karin Blomberg, Jason Murphy, Karin Hugelius","doi":"10.1186/s12873-024-01105-8","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>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.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>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.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>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.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":9002,"journal":{"name":"BMC Emergency Medicine","volume":"24 1","pages":"195"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11488114/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"BMC Emergency Medicine","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12873-024-01105-8","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EMERGENCY MEDICINE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: 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.
Methods: 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.
Results: 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.
Conclusion: 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.
期刊介绍：
BMC Emergency Medicine is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that considers articles on all urgent and emergency aspects of medicine, in both practice and basic research. In addition, the journal covers aspects of disaster medicine and medicine in special locations, such as conflict areas and military medicine, together with articles concerning healthcare services in the emergency departments.
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