Nurses Caring for COVID-19 Patients and Mental and Emotional Struggles

Nurses Caring for COVID-19 Patients and Their Mental and Emotional Struggles
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Nurses Caring for COVID-19 Patients and Their Mental and Emotional Struggles
Introduction
Undeniably, the ongoing Covid-19 outbreak has had a significant impact on people's lives worldwide. Apart from altering the daily routines, the disease has resulted in severe financial pressures. Again, individuals are always worried about getting sick and infecting their loved ones. During such a crisis, it is common for everyone, specifically the nurses and patients, to experience overwhelming and increased levels of substantial mental and emotional distress. These include fear, stress, and anxiety due to different public health actions such as social isolation, making one feel lonely (CDC, 2020). Besides, the current rumors and misinformation about the infection can make their living out of control because it is unclear what to do. Recently, the high Covid-19 pandemic's prevalence, its intense transmittable nature, and the related death rates are placing an extraordinary demand for effective care services globally. The scenario has also resulted in increased anxiety about the patients, the possibility of infecting relatives, and the disease's economic effect among the nurses caring for Covid-19 patients (Maben & Bridges, 2020). Since the pandemic's outbreak, the nursing professionals have had unrelenting pressure due to various factors, including long hours caring for the patients, fears regarding contracting the virus, social isolation from their loved ones, and redeployment, leading to severe mental and emotional struggles. Hence, a practical solution is necessary to help them cope with the situation while providing quality health services to deserving patients.
Problem/ Issue
As mentioned earlier, the nature of care that the Covid-19 patients need and the new working strategies are potentially stressful for the nurses. Apart from encountering an increased workload, these practitioners are having challenges accommodating new protocols and norms. For example, many psychological health services have faced a significant transformation from offering physical care to a predominantly virtual undertaking via a phone or a video consultation. In other scenarios, health practitioners are still adjusting to providing end-of-life care regularly than they used to experience. Besides, the new social distancing and isolation rules mean that they rarely get adequate time to spend with their families. Today, they must make more difficult ethical and moral judgments in clinics, care homes, and society worldwide (Maben & Bridges, 2020). Other challenges include the lack of testing for the front-line workers and the disparity in access to PPE. Therefore, it can be difficult for nurses not to develop strong mental and emotional responses to the coronavirus and its influence on one's works, including fear, worries, anger, and frustrations. Indeed, nurses have a relatively higher risk of encountering mental health effects due to the concerns about their wellbeing and that of their relatives and friends. Therefore, there is a need to develop a workable action plan to care for and help them deal with their mental and emotional struggles.
Question(s) From PICO
* P- What mental and emotional challenges do nurses encounter when caring for Covid-19 patients?
* I- What intervention policy is the research considering?
* C- Is there an alternative to compare with the selected intervention?
* O- What does the research intends to accomplish, measure, or improve?
Literature Review
Covid-19 is a newly evolving infectious illness that has resulted in severe health concerns worldwide. Due to its rapid spread across nations, health agencies have introduced several measures to minimize its impacts, altering people's lives almost in all aspects. The patients may have severe symptoms demanding intensive care, including oxygen therapy and other inpatient interventions. Assertively, nurses play a pivotal role in helping sick individuals to recover. Specifically, the pandemic has a significant impact on their work routine, leading to several problems for this fundamental part of society. These issues emanate from the rising demand for medical workers, the ever-increasing cost of personal protective equipment, and high mortality rates (Galehdar et al., 2020). Again, a significant number have a higher risk of getting sick and even death. Hence, it is nearly impossible to minimize the risk to zero. The disease's unique properties, such as high infectious nature that tend to jeopardize the lives of the nurses and other healthcare staff, coronavirus has caused significant confusion and a wide range of challenges among the population.
Today, WHO has declared the Covid-19 pandemic as a public health emergency globally. By April last year, the total number of the total confirmed cases was more than 2.8 million and approximately two hundred thousand deaths worldwide (Vizheh et al., 2020). The scenario implies that the outbreaks pose an intense demand for healthcare providers. Some factors that have led to an increased mental and emotional burden among the nurses include the rise in mortality rates, massive workload, fears of getting sick and infecting family and friends, variation in PPE access, social isolation, frustrations, and feelings of inadequate support. Apart from experiencing stress and trauma from patients dying, others feel isolated because of the new public health recommendations that limit their interactions with relatives to minimize the risk of spreading the virus. During the Covid-19 crisis, health workers tend to work for relatively longer hours while performing under overwhelming pressure (Galehdar et al., 2020). Like other individuals, these professionals encounter fake rumors and news that are likely to increase stress and cause anxiety. Nursing Covid-19 patients develop risk to various mental illnesses and emotional distress among the medical staff.
Since nurses are among the most active and involved health staff battling the outbreak, they are more likely to encounter psychological stress while caring for the infected patients. The reason is that they are regularly in direct contact with the patient from admission time to until they recover and become discharged. Hence, they have high exposure and are vulnerable to mental and emotional struggles than other health practitioners, especially during the pandemic. Research indicates that nurses providing intensive health services report the highest work stress and mental distress than other medical practitioners. A study assessing several health workers confirmed that these essential service providers suffer significant emotional instability during the early stages of the ongoing pandemic (Vizheh et al., 2020). The participants exhibited a feeling of uncertainties, vulnerabilities, and life threat characterized by cognitive and somatic anxiety symptoms. After the outbreak, traumatic stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, and avoidance became more prevalent. Healthcare facilities are gradually becoming overwhelmed due to the many concerns regarding people's lives. The phenomenon put the nurses in an unprecedented situation, requiring them to operate under intense pressure. Therefore, they become susceptible to encountering psychological and emotional issues, making the crisis an urgent public health concern.
Given the insights acquired from research articles emanating from various researchers, it is evident that the Covid-19 outbreak has resulted in severe mental and emotional distress among the healthcare professionals. Studies regarding the infection's psychosocial impact on the medical staff, especially the nurses caring for the infected patients, indicate the importance of considering a practical psychological health intervention. Precisely, there is an urgent need to develop a comprehensive and effective solution to protect nurses' mental and emotional health when dealing with Covid-19 patients. The intervention framework should aim at improving the target group's psychological health.
Research Questions
1 What impact is the Covid-19 outbreak having on the psychological and emotional wellbeing of the nurses?
2 What risk and protective factors are related to the mental health outcomes during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis?
3 How can health organizations help nurses manage their stress and emotions to offer quality care to Covid-19 patients?
Parameters for Developing Ethical Research Questions
Ethics refers to a system of rules, either written or unwritten, that governs a person's expectations and others' behavior. Hence, ethical research questions revolve around principles that guide how a researcher will conduct scientific or other researches and how they will disseminate it. Research ethics contributes significantly to promoting the aim of the study. Again, they support principles necessary for collaborative work, such as justice and mutual respect (Vanclay et al., 2013). These practices are integral because scientific research relies on effective teamwork between researchers and participants. Since a researcher is accountable for their actions, they should ensure that they embrace social and moral values including the principle of doing n harm to others. More importantly, they should ensure that the questions are objective, open, and respect intellectual property.
Potential Ethical Consideration for the Proposed Questions
When a researcher participates in any health research activity, they must deal with three central value systems, including science, society, and nursing. The scenario implies that one should deliberate on individual rights' societal values, the nursing culture that emphasizes caring ethics, and the investigator's values regarding a scientific analysis. Sometimes, these values may conflict with subjects and societies, resulting in nursing tensions and dilemmas. Therefore, some ethical considerations for the proposed questions, including informed consent, confidentiality, integrity, and objectivity, can help avoid such scenarios. Informed consent ensures that the researcher protects the participant's right to autonomy. Hence, they can decide whether to participate in the research voluntarily without an assault on their integrity, invasion of privacy, or any form of coercion (Health Science Journals, 2021). Confidentiality implies that a researcher should respect any details provided and protect sensitive information from unauthorized access. Integrity means that the research questions should guide an individual into conducting research honestly without engaging in any misleading or exaggerated findings. Finally, objectivity plays a pivotal role in ensuring that the proposed questions avoid bias that may interfere with research validity.
Theory or Model or Model Used
Human Caring Theory is among the ideal theories that can help implement the proposed evidence-based practice intervention. According to Watson, Human Caring Theory emphasizes people's treatment as unique beings who are inseparable from self, others, nature, and the larger workforce (RCH, 2020). Care is at the center of the theory and encompasses the entire nursing world. Therefore, it stresses the importance of interpersonal processes between the healthcare team and patients. Having intense emotions and mental instability is a common phenomenon for most health workers in the current Covid-19 era. These workers are prone to feel isolated and alone even if they have strong interpersonal skills. Although nurses can learn to accept the situation and live with the new norms over time, the healing power becomes more robust and effective when someone approaches them to listen to their stories and address their uncertainties. Stressful feelings can interfere with their working productivity, resulting in severe health consequences for individuals seeking healthcare services. Hence, offering emotional care involves being compassionate and treating the victim as a unique individual. Indeed, caring for nurses' emotional and mental wellbeing improves patient care quality because they can make sound clinical decisions and works without stress and other pressures.
The theory is best for the proposed evidence-based intervention because it emphasizes care. Caring is the endless language of nursing practice (Acob, 2020). It is the deliberate and sincere presence of a medical practitioner in the healing journey of a person. After a health professional realizes the existence of self with unique physical, emotional, and mental needs in an individual, they strive to offer holistic care, relying on communication and healthy interpersonal relationship with the sick to discern and intervene for their needs.
The intervention plan will incorporate the theory to provide comprehensive and individualized care for nurses cari...