Objective
The objective of this study was to explore nurses' experiences and perceptions at selected United States (U.S.) healthcare sites during the COVID‐19 pandemic.
Background
The COVID‐19 pandemic brought rapid changes to the healthcare community. While a few studies have examined the early pandemic experiences of nurses in China and Europe, nurses' experiences across the United States have remained relatively underexplored.
Design
A qualitative study design was used.
Methods
Using a constructivist grounded theory methodology and methods, we conducted eight focus groups across four hospital sites in the eastern, midwestern and western United States. Registered nurses with a minimum of six months' experience working in all clinical specialties were eligible. Forty‐three nurses participated. Data were analysed iteratively using the constant comparative method. The COREQ guidelines supported the work and reporting of this study.
Results
The nurses experiencing a pandemic (NEXPIC) grounded theory emerged positing associations between four interrelated themes: Challenges, Feelings, Coping and Ethics. Nurses reported Challenges associated with changes in the work environment, community and themselves. They expressed more negative than positive feelings. Nurses coped using self‐care techniques, and teamwork within the healthcare organisation. Moral dilemmas, moral uncertainty, moral distress, moral injury and moral outrage were ethical issues associated with nurses' Challenges during the pandemic. Moral courage was associated with positive Coping.
Conclusions
Awareness of frontline nurses' complex and interrelated needs may help healthcare organisations protect their human resources. This new theory provides preliminary theoretical support for future research and interventions to address the needs of frontline nurses.
Relevance to clinical practice
Nurses face added distress as frontline at‐risk caregivers. Interventions to promote nurses' ability to cope with personal and professional challenges from the pandemic and address ethical issues are needed to protect the nursing workforce. This study offers a new substantive theory that may be used to underpin future interventions.
Limb girdle muscular dystrophy type 2H (LGMD2H) is an inherited autosomal recessive disease of skeletal muscle caused by a mutation in the TRIM32 gene. Currently its pathogenesis is entirely unclear. Typically the regeneration process of adult skeletal muscle during growth or following injury is controlled by a tissue specific stem cell population termed satellite cells. Given that TRIM32 regulates the fate of mammalian neural progenitor cells through controlling their differentiation, we asked whether TRIM32 could also be essential for the regulation of myogenic stem cells. Here we demonstrate for the first time that TRIM32 is expressed in the skeletal muscle stem cell lineage of adult mice, and that in the absence of TRIM32, myogenic differentiation is disrupted. Moreover, we show that the ubiquitin ligase TRIM32 controls this process through the regulation of c-Myc, a similar mechanism to that previously observed in neural progenitors. Importantly we show that loss of TRIM32 function induces a LGMD2H-like phenotype and strongly affects muscle regeneration in vivo. Our studies implicate that the loss of TRIM32 results in dysfunctional muscle stem cells which could contribute to the development of LGMD2H.
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has infected more than 3.0 million people worldwide and killed more than 200,000 as of April 27, 2020. In this White Paper, we address the cardiovascular co‐morbidities of COVID‐19 infection; the diagnosis and treatment of standard cardiovascular conditions during the pandemic; and the diagnosis and treatment of the cardiovascular consequences of COVID‐19 infection. In addition, we will also address various issues related to the safety of healthcare workers and the ethical issues related to patient care in this pandemic.
The findings of this study demonstrated no significant relationships between the intervention and control groups on secondary traumatic stress, compassion satisfaction, and burnout among oncology nurses.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.