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Nurses in the Covid-19 Pandemic

Tanya Castro

California State University, Channel Islands

Nurs 499: Senior Capstone Project

Ashley Winans

July 22, 2022

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Nurses in the Covid-19 pandemic

The past two and a half years have been a rollercoaster ride for many people around the

world. Coronavirus, which is also known as COVID-19, is an infectious disease that attacks a

person in the respiratory system. The virus is airborne meaning it is spread through droplets in

the air. The disease has a wide variety of outcomes from being mild to moderate and can even

cause fatalities. This virus was new and hospitals were being overloaded with patients all at once

back in the ending of 2019 which then hit the United Started in March of 2020. One of the issues

that arose from this was the overload nurses were facing in the hospitals. The following

paragraphs go into depth on my findings from several research articles released last year.

The pandemic brought along a great amount of stress and issues within the healthcare

community. Many nurses were at the frontline helping save the lives of those impacted by

COVID-19 but it was a challenge due to the fact that there was no history or known treatment for

the virus. This only created more chaos for the citizens and health care workers. One of the many

issues they faced was being short staffed because many people were out sick or sent home.

According to the article written by Karen J. Foil, many nurses lost their lives battling this virus,

“At the end of 2020, 2262 nurses in 52 countries had died from COVID‐19 and more than 1.6

million healthcare workers had been infected, and of this 1.6 million. . .” (Foil et al., 2021). This

number was within the first year of the pandemic and this only meant that the numbers kept

increasing. This also led to hospitals being short staffed and some even decided to leave the

profession for good. Along with these issues, nurses were stretched out and trying to have them

care for as many patients at a time but this was not safe for the patients and nurses themselves.

As a result of this, the amount of staff available for these ill patients decreased and started

causing physiological issues in nurses.

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In relation to these issues, nurses around the world also experienced burnout. According

to the article, burnout is a form of exhaustion which is caused by repetitive routines and

exhaustion of several different types. Since the pandemic created certain limitations for nurses,

some of the medical staff was constantly working overtime for a few weeks in a row and this was

one of the causes. The study that was conducted in 2020 on nurses and the correlation of

burnout, “We found a significant prevalence of nurses' burnout during the COVID‐19 pandemic

according to the MBI. In particular, 34.1%, 15.2% and 12.6% of nurses experienced high levels

of emotional exhaustion, low personal accomplishment and depersonalization respectively.

These levels of burnout are higher by far even among nurses working in a highly stressful

environment such as palliative care” (Galanes et al. 2021). Some departments were hit harder

than others, especially those working in intensive care units. The article also found that women

were at a higher rate for emotional exhaustion and males were more at risk for depersonalization.

I feel as if this is the case because women tend to be more emotional and sentimental so they

tend to take in all of their emotions and take it home instead of trying to leave the stress at work

even if it felt impossible. Sue Turale also stated in her article that the large amount of pressure

these nurses were faced had serious negative side effects. These side effects came from nursing

shortages that were made worse within the pandemic and the lack of resources provided to the

nurses. Turale stated that a big portion of the nursing population was dealing with health issues,

mental health issues, and unable to cope with what was going on in the workplace.

Unfortunately it can be very difficult for nurses to get a break from their jobs because the

demand for them is high. Both articles written by Sriharan et al. and Llop-Gironés et al. state

that some of the mental health issues they dealt with were PTSD, anxiety, depression, etc. When

a nurse is not feeling one hundred percent that also means that they are unable to give that back.
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One needs to take care of themself in order to take care of others and since that was hard during

the pandemic some nurses started to go downhill. One of the articles also mentions that some

nurses who had been working for over twenty five years decided to walk away because it became

too brutal for them. Along with regular exhaustion also came mental health issues that were at all

time highs. Some nurses decided to start coping with substances in order to “feel” but this only

made things worse.

After reading and researching for extensive hours on nurses working through the

COVID-19 healthcare pandemic I can state that I know the major issues nurses have been

dealing with in the past two and a half years. Unfortunately nurses were placed at risk and not

taken care of as best as they should have been considering the circumstances because they were

putting their own lives and families at risk. The American government handled the situation as

best they could but the efforts could have been more efficient within hospitals and made them

feel as if they were aided. Without nurses and medical staff we are unable to function properly

and we should have taken more time to make sure even in hard times that safe practice measures

were being practiced and successfully executed. Nurses should not feel as if they are forced to do

something they know is not right.

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References

Foli, K. J., Forster, A., Cheng, C., Zhang, L., & Chiu, Y. C. (2021). Voices from the COVID-19

frontline: Nurses' trauma and coping. Journal of advanced nursing, 77(9), 3853–3866.

https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.14988

Galanis, P., Vraka, I., Fragkou, D., Bilali, A., & Kaitelidou, D. (2021). Nurses' burnout and

associated risk factors during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review and

meta-analysis. Journal of advanced nursing, 77(8), 3286–3302.

https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.14839

Llop-Gironés, A., Vračar, A., Llop-Gironés, G., Benach, J., Angeli-Silva, L., Jaimez, L., Thapa,

P., Bhatta, R., Mahindrakar, S., Bontempo Scavo, S., Nar Devi, S., Barria, S., Marcos

Alonso, S., & Julià, M. (2021). Employment and working conditions of nurses: where

and how health inequalities have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic?. Human

resources for health, 19(1), 112. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-021-00651-7

Sriharan, A., West, K. J., Almost, J., & Hamza, A. (2021). COVID-19-Related Occupational

Burnout and Moral Distress among Nurses: A Rapid Scoping Review. Nursing leadership

(Toronto, Ont.), 34(1), 7–19. https://doi.org/10.12927/cjnl.2021.26459

Turale, S., & Nantsupawat, A. (2021). Clinician mental health, nursing shortages and the

COVID-19 pandemic: Crises within crises. International nursing review, 68(1), 12–14.
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https://doi.org/10.1111/inr.12674