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Nurses' pandemic lives: A mixed-methods study of experiences during COVID-19
BACKGROUND: The US healthcare settings and staff have been stretched to capacity by the COVID-19 pandemic. While COVID-19 continues to threaten global healthcare delivery systems and populations, its impact on nursing has been profound. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to document nurses' immediate...
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/PMC8078035/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34247785 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apnr.2021.151437 |
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author | Gray, Kathleen Dorney, Paulette Hoffman, Lori Crawford, Albert |
author_facet | Gray, Kathleen Dorney, Paulette Hoffman, Lori Crawford, Albert |
author_sort | Gray, Kathleen |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The US healthcare settings and staff have been stretched to capacity by the COVID-19 pandemic. While COVID-19 continues to threaten global healthcare delivery systems and populations, its impact on nursing has been profound. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to document nurses' immediate reactions, major stressors, effective measures to reduce stress, coping strategies, and motivators as they provided care during COVID-19. DESIGN: Mixed-methods, cross sectional design. Participants responded to objective and open-ended questions on the COVID-19 Nurses' Survey. PARTICIPANTS: The survey, was sent to nurses employed in health care settings during the pandemic; 110 nurses participated. RESULTS: Immediate reactions of respondents were nervousness and call of duty; major stressors were uncertainty, inflicting the virus on family, lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), and protocol inconsistencies. Effective measures to reduce stress identified were financial incentives and mental health support. Most frequently used coping strategies were limiting televised news about the virus, talking with family and friends, and information, Motivators to participate in future care included having adequate PPE and sense of duty. Bivariate analysis of outcomes by age group, education, work setting, and marital status was performed. Nurse respondents with higher advanced degrees had significantly less fear than those with BSN-only degrees (p < .05).Of respondents who were married/living with a partner, 85.9% listing “uncertainty about when the pandemic will be under control” as a major stressor (p < .05), while 62.8% of those who were single/divorced/widowed (p = .015) did so. Further, 75% of respondents working in critical care listed “mental health services” as important (p = .054). Four major qualitative themes emerged: What is going on here?; How much worse can this get?; What do I do now?; What motivates me to do future work? CONCLUSION: The study found nurses were motivated by ethical duty to care for patients with COVID-19 despite risk to self and family, leaving nurses vulnerable to moral distress and burnout. This research articulates the need for psychological support, self- care initiatives, adequate protection, information, and process improvements in the healthcare systems to reduce the risk of moral distress, injury and burnout among nurses. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8078035 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Elsevier Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80780352021-04-28 Nurses' pandemic lives: A mixed-methods study of experiences during COVID-19 Gray, Kathleen Dorney, Paulette Hoffman, Lori Crawford, Albert Appl Nurs Res Article BACKGROUND: The US healthcare settings and staff have been stretched to capacity by the COVID-19 pandemic. While COVID-19 continues to threaten global healthcare delivery systems and populations, its impact on nursing has been profound. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to document nurses' immediate reactions, major stressors, effective measures to reduce stress, coping strategies, and motivators as they provided care during COVID-19. DESIGN: Mixed-methods, cross sectional design. Participants responded to objective and open-ended questions on the COVID-19 Nurses' Survey. PARTICIPANTS: The survey, was sent to nurses employed in health care settings during the pandemic; 110 nurses participated. RESULTS: Immediate reactions of respondents were nervousness and call of duty; major stressors were uncertainty, inflicting the virus on family, lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), and protocol inconsistencies. Effective measures to reduce stress identified were financial incentives and mental health support. Most frequently used coping strategies were limiting televised news about the virus, talking with family and friends, and information, Motivators to participate in future care included having adequate PPE and sense of duty. Bivariate analysis of outcomes by age group, education, work setting, and marital status was performed. Nurse respondents with higher advanced degrees had significantly less fear than those with BSN-only degrees (p < .05).Of respondents who were married/living with a partner, 85.9% listing “uncertainty about when the pandemic will be under control” as a major stressor (p < .05), while 62.8% of those who were single/divorced/widowed (p = .015) did so. Further, 75% of respondents working in critical care listed “mental health services” as important (p = .054). Four major qualitative themes emerged: What is going on here?; How much worse can this get?; What do I do now?; What motivates me to do future work? CONCLUSION: The study found nurses were motivated by ethical duty to care for patients with COVID-19 despite risk to self and family, leaving nurses vulnerable to moral distress and burnout. This research articulates the need for psychological support, self- care initiatives, adequate protection, information, and process improvements in the healthcare systems to reduce the risk of moral distress, injury and burnout among nurses. Elsevier Inc. 2021-08 2021-04-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8078035/ /pubmed/34247785 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apnr.2021.151437 Text en © 2021 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 Gray, Kathleen Dorney, Paulette Hoffman, Lori Crawford, Albert Nurses' pandemic lives: A mixed-methods study of experiences during COVID-19 |
title | Nurses' pandemic lives: A mixed-methods study of experiences during COVID-19 |
title_full | Nurses' pandemic lives: A mixed-methods study of experiences during COVID-19 |
title_fullStr | Nurses' pandemic lives: A mixed-methods study of experiences during COVID-19 |
title_full_unstemmed | Nurses' pandemic lives: A mixed-methods study of experiences during COVID-19 |
title_short | Nurses' pandemic lives: A mixed-methods study of experiences during COVID-19 |
title_sort | nurses' pandemic lives: a mixed-methods study of experiences during covid-19 |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8078035/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34247785 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apnr.2021.151437 |
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