A Longitudinal Analysis of the Traumatic Impact of COVID-19 on Healthcare Professionals in the Framework of Memory

With the project, it was aimed to examine the relationship between the memory patterns of the health workers who were actively working during the COVID-19 pandemic and the events they witnessed and the trauma reactions during the pandemic process, and to reveal which individuals are in the risk group by determining the individual characteristics that differentiate the post-traumatic stress and developmental responses. During the acute period of the epidemic, it was determined that the way of remembering the events that health workers remember related to the epidemic was related to rumination and coping skills. Consistency between how events are remembered in the progressive and more intense period of the epidemic and the characteristics of remembering in the first stage has been shown, and the relationship of this pattern with the reactions of health workers to traumatic stress and post-traumatic development has been shown. If the memories taken in the first session (July 2020) in individuals with a high tendency to rumination were evaluated high in terms of recall features such as emotional intensity, re-living sensation and visual imagination, it was observed that the memories retrieved in the second session (November 2020) were similarly negative and had a high recall quality. . More importantly, as expected, this pattern was also found to increase both traumatic stress (secondary traumatization level) and traumatic development. The second phase of the study was carried out at a time when the severity of the pandemic was intense. For this reason, it is thought that it is important to examine whether the findings differ or not with the data to be collected in a period when the severity of the pandemic decreases. In the light of the findings, it has been revealed that the patterns related to remembering are informative about the employees in the risk group. From this point of view, it has been suggested to develop preventive support programs by targeting memory characteristics and rumination tendencies.