JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in the digital age is called the first “data-driven pandemic” in human history. The COVID-19 pandemic showed that many countries had failed to effectively prepare for a crisis. Learning through experience in a crisis is one of the ways to improve the crisis management process. As the world returns to normal after the pandemic, questions are being raised about crisis management in each country, which call for reflection.

Objective:

This review collected and organized public health professionals’ experiences in crisis communication to the general public during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods:

We searched PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, Communication Abstracts, and Web of Science in February 2024 to locate English language articles that qualitatively investigated difficulties and needs experienced by health professionals in their communication activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Results:

This review included 17 studies. Our analysis identified seven themes and 20 sub-themes. The seven themes were: difficulties in pandemic communication, difficulties caused by the infodemic, difficulties with partnerships within/outside of public health, difficulties in community engagement, difficulties in effective communication, burnout among communicators, and the need to train communication specialists and establish a permanent organization specializing in communication.

Conclusions:

This review identified the gaps between existing crisis communication guidelines and real-world crisis communication in the digital environment and clarified the difficulties and needs that arose from these gaps. Crisis communication strategies and guidelines should be updated with reference to the themes revealed in this review to effectively respond to subsequent public health crises. Clinical Trial: PROSPERO CRD42024528975; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=528975