Title: Fright management among rehab professionals amid COVID 19

Abstract

Presently the acceptable manner to protect oneself against the onslaught of genetically varying forms is through practicing social distancing and when coupled with the prospects of heading towards social isolation with its accompanying economic losses. Stress and anxiety is the initial reaction upon being diagnosed as positive for SARS-2 CoV RNA on PCR causing alarm in rehabilitation professionals encountering direct exposure and being vulnerableas rehabilitation of patients is necessarily carried out. Despite the electronic media blitz scientific data remains insufficient to establish definite medical and health protocols being a recent and ongoing pandemic. The current study is an attempt to review and isolate the triggerscausing fright among rehabilitation professionals thereby identifyingcredible management solutionsarising in the backdrop of Pakistan’s current pandemic of COVID-19 .In this regard literature was searched from major electronic databases including PubMed, Google, Google Scholar and Web-of-science, with keywords “Covid-19, mental health, telehealth, telemedicine, tele-rehabilitation and combination of words”. Eighty English, full text articles were analyzed out of which 36 were used for the literature review which leads to the conclusion that COVID-19 embodies fear of contracting and transmitting this disease among health professionals. This fear can be mitigated and managed by relying more on availability of tele-rehabilitation and telehealth facilities. Treatment of patients emerging from prolonged mechanical ventilations demands extensive rehabilitation to restore routine body functions. The direct and structured approach of otolaryngologists and speech language pathologists (SLP) enables appropriate and timely long term intervention and rehabilitation empowering and facilitating patientsto resume mainstream activities.