What were the experiences of servicers users and healthcare workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the world. Travel restrictions, lockdowns and the human cost both in deaths and long-term issues has affected almost everyone on the planet. Research has started to emerge about the impact of the pandemic on healthcare staff, service users, and their carers on both their mental and physical well-being. The Scottish Government restricted NHS services in order to increase capacity for treating COVID-19 service users but to date no study has been done to study the impact of these restrictions on non-COVID-19 service users who saw their service reduced or removed. This literature review of research outside of Scotland found fear and anxiety to be prevalent amongst healthcare workers and service users. It also found evidence that non COVID-19 healthcare was impacted detrimentally for the service users due to reallocation of resources and reduction of services. Research is proposed to find out the impact of the Scottish Government restriction and reduction of services on non-COVID-19 adult service users in order to begin exploration of the impact and help further research be done that could be used to plan more effectively should restrictions ever be required again. The research is a qualitative exploratory phenomenological study using semi structured telephony/video interviews for 20 adult participants to talk about their experience of accessing healthcare during the pandemic.