Because of the global outbreak of COVID-19, medical health professionals must develop both physical and social defenses. The role of the medical and social field is not only medical treatment and care for infected cases, but also it is necessary to develop social inclusion so that medical workers and related affiliates can maintain their functions as society members and not becoming targets of exclusion and discrimination. In such circumstances, in order to reduce the burden of people and organizations working with COVID-19 infection countermeasures, it is necessary to develop social networks that are not dependent upon their organization’s human resources, but instead may exist outside of their workplace.
Providing health care organization members with external support are members of The Japan Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing who are composed mainly of professionals in Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing field, and have the characteristic of having National Qualification in Nursing. Many of Academy members individually support (officially or non-officially) prefectures, local cities, professional associations, each medical health related organization, medical health institution like hospitals, clinics, and health facilities. Most of these supports are conducted remotely by telephone, e-mail, and web conference systems. Global organizations, like WHO, promote the necessity of psychiatric and social support for medical workers by remote access, and it is required to improve their quantity and quality.
Therefore, we developed and released this consultation-support guideline for people noted above from the perspective of supporting-supporters remotely.
The target users of this guideline are the people who have a background as medical health workers who are dealing with supporting medical heath workers.
When we developed this guideline from April to May in 2020, the state of emergency was declared national-wide in Japan. Therefore we developed that guideline rapidly. In such circumstances, this current guideline is considered preferable as the revised or improved version, which will be updated on an ongoing basis.
To develop this guideline, we received advice and support from a variety of individuals and organizations. The supports are documented as references at the end of the book and on our homepage.
We are going to contribute to the overcoming of the impact of this global infectious crisis, and to respond to a new social value. At first, hopefully this guideline will be useful for readers and people who are supported by readers.
May 18th 2020
Japan Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing
Chairperson Mami KAYAMA
Chair of Social Contribution Hiroaki AMBO
The Social Contribution Committee took the lead in collecting literature on the creation of this guideline, and the following people contributed.
Hiroaki Ambo, Akiko Inagaki, Nozomi Setoya, Ayumi Takano, Yoko Takahashi, Makoto Masumitsu, Michiko Matsueda, Norika Mitsunaga, Tomoyuki Yamamoto.
In addition, authors received supervision from Hiroshi Kato and Tomoko Osawa (Hyogo Institute for Traumatic Stress).
