Background
The world faced a great health crisis during the covid‐19 pandemic. Consequently, the healthcare providers struggled and faced tremendous difficulties in treating high‐load critical patients. This was particularly true in low‐ and middle‐income countries where the work and patient loads are always higher and nurses at the forefront must deal with emergencies while being at high risk of exposure. However, little is known about the survival strategies of frontline nurses as dealt with the pandemic.
Objectives
This study catalogued the coping strategies of frontline nurses to deal with caring for the covid‐19 patients during the pandemic.
Methods
The Arksey O'Malley framework was followed to conduct a scoping review. A systematic literature search was conducted using three databases: Google Scholar, Scopus, and PubMed and out of the 192 studies, 12 met the inclusion criteria set for this review study.
Results
A total of 44 strategies were identified that motivated nurses to deal with the covid‐19 situation, and these strategies could be categorized into five main themes: nurses’ self‐strategies, nurses’ strategies at the ethical level, employers’ strategies, nursing leaders’ strategies, and supplementary strategies.
Conclusions
The findings of this study will provide guidance for healthcare workers, employers, policy makers, regulators and other stakeholders to adopt and promote different strategies in managing difficult emergency situations in future.
Implications for nursing management
This study emphasizes the importance of learning how to deal with adversity by healthcare workers and organizations in an emergency.
Background: As the incidence of COVID-19 is increasing, the Bangladesh government has announced a countrywide shutdown instead of a lockdown. Consequently, front-line healthcare workers, particularly nurses, are confronting more challenging situations at work.
Objective: This study aimed to explore front-line nurses’ experiences caring for patients with COVID-19 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted among front-line nurses caring for patients with COVID-19. Twenty nurses were purposively chosen from January to March 2021 to participate in semi-structured online interviews. Interviews on audio and video were collected, analyzed, interpreted, transcribed verbatim, and verified by experts. Thematic analysis was used.
Results: Nine themes emerged and were grouped into negative and positive experiences. The themes of negative experiences include lack of necessary medical equipment, use of non-standard personal protective equipment, work overload, long working hours, poor working environment, and lack of quality of nursing care. The positive experiences include feeling self in a patient position, nurses’ coping strategy in COVID-19 patient care, and establishing emotional control.
Conclusion: The study results encourage national and international health care professionals to cope with adverse working environments. Also, the findings provide nurses with techniques for dealing with any critical situation, controlling patients’ emotions, and how empathy increases self-confidence and patient care. The research should also be used to enhance government policy, nursing council policy, ministry of health policy, and other healthcare agencies.
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