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Chapter 41 - Lessons for Structure, Workforce Planning, and Responding to Emergencies from Nurses in the COVID-19 Pandemic

from Section 5 - Sustaining and Caring for Staff During Emergencies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2024

By
Jill Maben  and
Anna Conolly
Edited by
Richard Williams ,
Verity Kemp ,
Keith Porter ,
Tim Healing  and
John Drury
Richard Williams
Affiliation:
University of South Wales
Verity Kemp
Affiliation:
Independent Health Emergency Planning Consultant
Keith Porter
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Tim Healing
Affiliation:
Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London
John Drury
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Summary

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, there has been much research examining the effects of working during COVID-19 on different sectors of the healthcare workforce. This chapter explores the detailed narratives of nurses’ experiences of COVID-19 in the ICON qualitative research. The participants were from a wide range of working environments and were asked about the possible impacts of working during the pandemic on their psychosocial and emotional wellbeing. It concludes that nurses provided the most care 24 hours a day/7 days a week for patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study showed that nurses continued to put patients’ needs first, often to the detriment of their own health. It outlines valuable lessons in the form of structural, organizational, and team learning to support psychosocial wellness in emergencies and disease outbreaks such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords

‘Impact of COVID-19 on Nurses’ (ICON) studymoral distressnursesnursingpatient carewellbeing
Type
Chapter
Information
Major Incidents, Pandemics and Mental Health
The Psychosocial Aspects of Health Emergencies, Incidents, Disasters and Disease Outbreaks
 , pp. 301 - 313
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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