THE ROLE OF HEALTH PROFESSIONALS IN CONTAINING THE CONTAGION OF COVID-19: AN ACTOR NETWORK THEORY PERSPECTIVE

• Main Author: Febrila Nilamsari, Annora
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/70969
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The emergence of the infectious disease COVID-19 presents a pandemic outbreak that feels like a crisis for everyone and everything, including health professionals. Health professionals are the human resources who are at the forefront of dealing with and breaking the COVID-19 disease. At the beginning of the COVID-19 case, the implementation of medical treatment still feels very heavy and a long process. If the spread of this disease is not controlled, it will further worsen the condition of the community. At that time there was also no specific vaccine or drug that specifically cured COVID-19. So, the first step taken by the government was to focus on containing the contagion of COVID-19. In Indonesia, mitigation and restriction efforts are carried out with contact tracing, mass scale testing, and treatment, which is called the 3T term. In reality, when faced with the COVID-19 disease, the crisis conditions make the mitigation, treatment and restriction processes experience conditions of uncertainty. This study formulates the research problem that in the COVID-19 Pandemic crisis, there are many uncertainties that occur in the phenomenon of containing the contagion of COVID-19. Health professionals are present to intervene in the midst of COVID-19 infection and transmission. Thus, this research will look at the phenomenon of reassembling how the COVID-19 transmission restrictions occur by highlighting health workers as parties who try to fight, break and even stop the transmission by carrying out various interventions, but these interventions are very dependent on how various parties play a role. This highly networked case with high uncertainty will be explored from the perspective of Actor Network Theory by Latour (2005). This research uses a qualitative approach with a case study design as a framing by filling it using phenomenological perspective and the Actor Network Theory perspective by Latour (2005). The novelty that researchers raise in this study is how to highlight the phenomenon of high uncertainty in limiting the transmission of COVID-19 by specializing in those faced by health workers in public institutions, in this case hospitals that are at the forefront of facing COVID-19 transmission using the Actor Network Theory point of view. The contribution of this research is to highlight the phenomenon of high uncertainty in limiting the transmission of COVID-19 by specializing in those faced by health workers and how Actor Network Theory can contribute to analyzing this phenomenon because Actor Network Theory itself has advantages in discussing uncertainty and network studies. Then, from the results of the analysis, researchers will draw lessons or insights to deal with the possibility of another outbreak. The findings produced in this study are that in the perspective of Actor Network Theory, uncertainty in the phenomenon of limiting transmission of COVID-19 is characterized by the uncertainty of groups and agencies that are often overtaken. This uncertainty is characterized by the various possibilities that occur in the types of interventions provided by health workers for each individual COVID-19 patient as a consequence of the deadlock of action and by the differences in what accompanies patients and even health professionals themselves as actors. That is, there are various agencies and overtaking by objects that accompany the actions of each individual patient and health worker COVID-19. The communication process experienced by COVID-19 patients and health workers is overtaken by the need for health workers to be guided by the results of clinical trials of COVID-19 testing. In fact, when suffering from COVID-19, the uncertainty of the diversity of 'stories' that occur regarding how the patient's condition when infected with COVID-19 such as how the symptoms are felt, and how the contagion pattern itself. In terms of public health institutions, health professionals are the human resources owned by the government and are in the field to deal directly with COVID-19. Researchers get an idea that the objects that accompany patient actors and health workers have a natural tendency to offer a variety of things to health workers and are often unexpected or overtaking, in other words, 'action is overtaken' in the phenomenon of limiting the transmission of COVID-19 by health workers. Thus, the capacity of health workers in combating the infectious disease COVID-19 depends on their experience and the factors around them with each case having different conditions. In the case of COVID-19, health professionals must still make the results of clinical trials of COVID-19 testing the main consideration because COVID-19 disease is not only a matter of healing individual diseases, but broader than that, namely there is a consideration of the risk of transmission that occurs. So, in this case there is an effort to improve life collectively. The researcher draws the main conclusion that containing the contagion of COVID-19 by health professionals can improve public health if the objects that accompany patients and health workers can be controlled by the actors involved. This control can be done through several efforts, which are: a) increase attention to the specificity of each COVID-19 patient due to the unpredictability of the condition; b) carry out experimental actions collectively; and c) raise awareness of the certainty of staying in motion by everyone (human) and everything (non- human).