A provincial study of nurses' COVID-19 experiences and psychological health and safety in British Columbia, Canada : Final report

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health of nurses in British Columbia, Canada using trends analysis across three time points

“…First, compared to prepandemic data, a greater proportion of nurses met the criteria for both anxiety and depression early-pandemic (15% increase versus 10% increase), followed by a slight decline in both mental health outcomes at Time 3. Like many other countries [23] , [24] , [25] , [26] , [27] , Canada experienced COVID-19 shock, due to a suboptimal level of preparedness that resulted in many challenges for healthcare workers, including, but not limited to, significant shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) [ 1 , 17 , 28 , 29 ], daily or more frequent changes in organizational policies and protocols [ 28 , 30 ], poor workplace safety [ 1 , 2 , 17 ], and tremendous fears of COVID-19 exposure and/or spreading the virus home [ 28 , 31 ]. Emerging pandemic evidence has linked these COVID-19 related challenges to unfavorable mental health outcomes among healthcare workers [ 17 , 29 , 32 ].…”

“…While our study provides important new information, we note there is an urgent need for evidence-based practice and policy recommendations that prevent and mitigate the mental health implications of COVID-19 on nurses as they will continue to respond to future waves of the pandemic. Given the emerging research evidence [ 1 , 17 , 28 , 29 ], we believe systematic efforts ensuring that nurses’ PPE and infection prevention and control needs are met are an important first step to improving the mental health of the nursing workforce. We emphasize that optimal pandemic management is not possible without a healthy and optimized health workforce that can respond to public health needs in an effective and timely manner.…”