Just over one year on from one of Australia's worst bushfire seasons, a researcher in clinical psychology from the University of New England is curious to know what impact the disaster had on the mental well-being of health professionals who provided support to people affected by the fires.
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Steve Porter, UNE student and an employee with Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District, is hoping to learn more about how health professionals were impacted by their involvement in the fires.
"To date most of the research in relation to bushfires have focused on emergency services such as paramedics and fire fighters," Mr Porter said.
"These staff undertake specialist training and, by virtue of the nature of their work, would be seen to be 'prepared' to deal with disasters such as bushfires.
"As a health worker who supported logistical operations from the state health emergency operation centre (SHEOC) in December 2019 and January 2020, I'm curious to see how the preparedness of health professionals', both personally and professionally, influenced positive and negative mental health outcomes."
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Mr Porter has compiled a short online survey to gather data for his research although participants can also choose to do an interview if they prefer.
To date Mr Porter has surveyed almost 100 health professionals but needs more participants to allow test study predictions.
Associate Professor Navjot Bhullar, Project Principal Supervisor, emphasised that to better support health professionals providing support during natural disasters, we need to first understand their personal and organisational preparedness and how it impacts on their mental health outcomes.
"We need to look after health professionals first who are expected to look after us during crisis. So, we like to hear from a diverse range of health professionals."
Mr Porter's study measures how prepared health worker are, on both personal and organisational level, to support communities impacted by the recent bushfires. Preparedness is then related to posttraumatic growth or the positive changes a person goes through after adversity, vicarious trauma which is the secondary trauma experienced by health professionals who support clients through traumatic events, and mental health symptoms such as depression, anxiousness and stress.
"Current research shows that higher levels of trauma and stress are associated with high levels of post traumatic growth," Mr Porter said.
"However, these studies tended to focus on emergency personnel. As some of the key findings influencing negative outcomes are organisational factors such as rosters, communications and training, my study also explores organisational preparedness and its relationship to posttraumatic growth, vicarious trauma and mental health symptoms."
Preliminary results from data gathered across New South Wales (NSW) so far supports Mr Porter's hypothesis.
"The data show that personal preparedness is positively associated with post traumatic growth and negatively associated with depression, anxiety and stress, which implies that as personal preparation increases the chances of these negative symptoms decreases. We have also noticed anecdotally that those with more experience seem to report less negative mental health symptoms."
Mr Porter hopes his findings will be used to aid health services and other government organisations to customise programs that build resilience during and after disasters, while also helping to boost proactive robust preparation.
"As a psychologist and a health worker of more than eight years I am acutely aware of the lack of specific preparation we are provided with respect to managing disaster. The education and health systems are producing professionals ready to work in reasonably controlled and supervised clinical environment, however it is often these same professionals that get called in to support disasters when they reach a catastrophic level," Mr Porter explained.
"If university studies or placements can be adapted to better prepare upcoming professionals then there is a greater chance of mitigating the negative impacts of vicarious trauma and negative mental health symptoms."
This project is part of a larger program of research examining resilience, social connectedness and mental health outcomes of the survivors of 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires that Associate Professor Navjot Bhullar and Professor Kim Usher are leading at UNE.
Health professionals who are interested in participating in the study can access the survey here: or find the link on Australian Bushfire Research's Facebook page
