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)