What Helped the Helpers? Health Care Social Workers’ Phenomenological Perspective Regarding Coping Resources in the Contexts of Shared Traumatic Reality

Coping resources are a vital component for health care social workers (HCSWs), considering the challenges embodied in their work routine. However, when it comes to times of national– global crisis, the issue of coping resources becomes both urgent and unique because it is a context of shared traumatic reality. In such situations, both the professional and the service users simultaneously face the same existential threat. Therefore, the present study used the interpretive phenomenological approach to examine coping resources as defined by 15 HCSWs regarding the role they played during the COVID-19 crisis. The participants completed semistructured, qualitative interviews in which they shared their knowledge about coping resources in the professional and personal-family dimensions. Four themes and nine subthemes related to coping resources emerged: (a) professional vitality, which is described through the subthemes of “sacred” work and being part of an elite unit; (b) team cohesion, manifested through the subthemes of team support and management support; (c) self-care, in which the subthemes of self-listening, internalized values, and rites of passage are expressed; and (d) family support, described through the subthemes of independence/stability, as well as pride. These findings highlight the ways in which coping resources helped the HCSWs contain and manage the home–work conflict, which takes on a critical meaning during times of national– global crisis. Therefore, HCSWs and the organizations that employ them need to recognize and institutionalize the various manifestations of these coping resources, some of which have been described as based on spontaneity.