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A qualitative exploration of the experiences of school nurses during COVID-19 pandemic as the frontline primary health care professionals
BACKGROUND: It is widely acknowledged that the experiences of frontline primary health care professionals during COVID-19 are important to understand how they respond and act under situations of pandemic as the gatekeepers in primary health care system. School nurses are primary health care professi...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier Inc.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7834307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33541726 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2020.12.003 |
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author | Lee, Regina L.T. West, Sancia Tang, Anson C.Y. Cheng, Ho Yu Chong, Connie Y.Y. Chien, Wai Tong Chan, Sally W.C. |
author_facet | Lee, Regina L.T. West, Sancia Tang, Anson C.Y. Cheng, Ho Yu Chong, Connie Y.Y. Chien, Wai Tong Chan, Sally W.C. |
author_sort | Lee, Regina L.T. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: It is widely acknowledged that the experiences of frontline primary health care professionals during COVID-19 are important to understand how they respond and act under situations of pandemic as the gatekeepers in primary health care system. School nurses are primary health care professionals who lead health care in schools and practice in a holistic manner to address the needs of schoolchildren and school personnel. There are rising mental health concerns of frontline health care professionals with anxiety and panic disorders, somatic symptoms, and feeling isolated. No studies use a qualitative study approach to document community frontline school nursing professionals’ experiences and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, understanding the school nurses’ experiences and challenges to fight against COVID-19 in the communities is important. PURPOSE: This study aims to explore the experiences of school nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong. METHODS: A qualitative study design adopted the principles of thematic analysis. Nineteen school nurses were recruited to participate in individual semistructured interviews and shared their roles and responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. FINDINGS: Three themes indicated the school nurses’ expand professional responsibilities to fight against COVID-19 emerged from the data analysis. These were “Managing Stress,” “Navigating the School Through the Pandemic,” and “Raising the Profile of the School Nurse Professional,” DISCUSSION: Findings reveal the important role of school nursing professionals in minimizing the community-wide risk posed by pandemics and the need to integrate them into planning and implementation of school health policies and guidelines in the primary health care system. This essential role in schools is necessary to assess, implement, monitor, prevent, and reduce the spread of virus in school communities and to minimize the burden to and extra health care resources utilized in the acute care setting during COVID-19 pandemic. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7834307 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Elsevier Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-78343072021-01-26 A qualitative exploration of the experiences of school nurses during COVID-19 pandemic as the frontline primary health care professionals Lee, Regina L.T. West, Sancia Tang, Anson C.Y. Cheng, Ho Yu Chong, Connie Y.Y. Chien, Wai Tong Chan, Sally W.C. Nurs Outlook Article BACKGROUND: It is widely acknowledged that the experiences of frontline primary health care professionals during COVID-19 are important to understand how they respond and act under situations of pandemic as the gatekeepers in primary health care system. School nurses are primary health care professionals who lead health care in schools and practice in a holistic manner to address the needs of schoolchildren and school personnel. There are rising mental health concerns of frontline health care professionals with anxiety and panic disorders, somatic symptoms, and feeling isolated. No studies use a qualitative study approach to document community frontline school nursing professionals’ experiences and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, understanding the school nurses’ experiences and challenges to fight against COVID-19 in the communities is important. PURPOSE: This study aims to explore the experiences of school nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong. METHODS: A qualitative study design adopted the principles of thematic analysis. Nineteen school nurses were recruited to participate in individual semistructured interviews and shared their roles and responsibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. FINDINGS: Three themes indicated the school nurses’ expand professional responsibilities to fight against COVID-19 emerged from the data analysis. These were “Managing Stress,” “Navigating the School Through the Pandemic,” and “Raising the Profile of the School Nurse Professional,” DISCUSSION: Findings reveal the important role of school nursing professionals in minimizing the community-wide risk posed by pandemics and the need to integrate them into planning and implementation of school health policies and guidelines in the primary health care system. This essential role in schools is necessary to assess, implement, monitor, prevent, and reduce the spread of virus in school communities and to minimize the burden to and extra health care resources utilized in the acute care setting during COVID-19 pandemic. Elsevier Inc. 2021 2020-12-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7834307/ /pubmed/33541726 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2020.12.003 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Lee, Regina L.T. West, Sancia Tang, Anson C.Y. Cheng, Ho Yu Chong, Connie Y.Y. Chien, Wai Tong Chan, Sally W.C. A qualitative exploration of the experiences of school nurses during COVID-19 pandemic as the frontline primary health care professionals |
title | A qualitative exploration of the experiences of school nurses during COVID-19 pandemic as the frontline primary health care professionals |
title_full | A qualitative exploration of the experiences of school nurses during COVID-19 pandemic as the frontline primary health care professionals |
title_fullStr | A qualitative exploration of the experiences of school nurses during COVID-19 pandemic as the frontline primary health care professionals |
title_full_unstemmed | A qualitative exploration of the experiences of school nurses during COVID-19 pandemic as the frontline primary health care professionals |
title_short | A qualitative exploration of the experiences of school nurses during COVID-19 pandemic as the frontline primary health care professionals |
title_sort | qualitative exploration of the experiences of school nurses during covid-19 pandemic as the frontline primary health care professionals |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7834307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33541726 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2020.12.003 |
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