One young inpatient nurse, for example, described frustrations with lack of communication from management: “They just weren’t telling us much of anything. Even when they were given information about these changes, many health care organizations weren’t transparent about the reasons behind them and expected nurses to just roll with the punches.Įven worse, some health care organizations gaslit nurses for being concerned for their own safety. Nurses said they struggled with rapidly changing policies and procedures. Nurses lost trust in health care organizations If anything, it just makes the environment more toxic and unbearable, definitely, and at one point, it will start affecting … your mental health and your physical health, even your spiritual health.” 3. … All the drama from work and things like that, those don’t help.
Those are very draining, especially when we’re supposed to provide patient care and do a good job. This has left many nurses feeling unappreciated, undervalued and unsafe.Īs one nurse from our study explained: “Lack of resources, lack of staffing, lack of getting all our concerns addressed, things like that. Many organizations instead require overtime and don’t provide adequate resources, such as personal protective equipment or support personnel, for safe patient care. While some health care organizations have offered increased pay to travel nurses, or contracted temp nurses to address staffing shortages, that offer hasn’t been extended to their full-time staff. Nurses have cared for patients despite working in hazardous work environments. Nurses lack adequate resources or support If a patient was admitted and you had to take care of one, you kind of felt like you were being thrown to the wolves as an experiment.” 2. This is how one young nurse described their experience caring for COVID-19 patients without any safety guidance: “There was a palpable tenseness being there … nobody knew what was going on or what was expected. The nurses in our studies put the needs of their patients and society above their own. Similarly, we found that 67% of nurses under 30 are considering leaving their organizations within the next two years. A survey conducted by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses of over 6,000 ICU nurses found that 66% of respondents were considering leaving nursingas a result of their care experiences during the pandemic. This ultimately could result in nurses’ leaving the profession because of burnout. Consequently, it becomes normalized for nurses to work longer hours or extra shifts without consideration for how this may affect them personally. With this hero narrative, expectations of what nurses should do become unrealistic, such as working with inadequate resources, staffing and safety precautions. But this can be a dangerous label with negative consequences. As of the end of December 2020, more than 1.6 million health care workers worldwide had been infected by COVID-19, and nurses make up the largest affected group in many countries.įor this, nurses have been hailed as heroes. Nurses demonstrated that they will do almost anything for their patients, even risking their own lives. Calling nurses ‘heroes’ is a harmful narrative To help you understand their experiences, here are the five key takeaways from our studies on what nursing has been like during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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