Experiences, emotional responses, and coping skills of nursing students as auxiliary health workers during the peak COVID‐19 pandemic: A qualitative study

Abstract

The COVID‐19 crisis in Spain has exacerbated the shortage of nursing staff to respond to increasing healthcare demands. For this reason, nursing students were requested to collaborate voluntarily as auxiliary health staff. This emergency has led to mental health problems in health professionals, hence the relevance of coping techniques. The objectives of this study were to explore the experiences and emotional responses of final‐year nursing students who volunteered to carry out healthcare relief tasks during the peak of the COVID‐19 pandemic, and to identify the coping strategies they adopted to deal with this situation. A qualitative study was conducted in the constructivist paradigm. Purposive sampling was used, and twenty‐two students participated in semi‐structured interviews, which were then content‐analysed. The study is reported using the COREQ checklist. Five themes emerged in the ‘Experiences and emotional response’ dimension (context, patients, emotions and feelings, risk of contagion, and personal satisfaction), and three themes emerged in the ‘Coping strategies’ dimension strategies in the work environment, in daily life and personal life. Although the students expressed negative emotions due to the highly complex context and lack of professional experience, they evaluated the experience positively in terms of learning and usefulness. Most notably, the students employed adaptive coping strategies to deal with the pandemic.

Resilience, Coping Strategies and Posttraumatic Growth in the Workplace Following COVID-19: A Narrative Review on the Positive Aspects of Trauma

“…Positive and negative coping strategies were identified. The former were associated with a reduction in poor mental health outcomes [ 38 , 42 , 51 , 66 , 71 , 72 , 74 , 75 ]. Active coping strategies were also positively associated with resilience [ 71 ].…”

“…Active coping strategies were also positively associated with resilience [ 71 ]. The key positive coping strategies were a positive attitude towards the problem, social network, peer support, teamwork, self-reliance, problem negotiation and self-care [ 38 , 63 , 74 ]. Seeking social support was a common coping strategy.…”

“…Closely related to resilience, we found that coping strategies play a fundamental role in the management of the emergency and the related occupational stress. Negative coping mechanisms like escape and avoidance strategies or overcommitment seem to be associated with worse mental outcomes [ 33 , 38 , 43 , 49 , 56 ], while positive attitude towards the problem, social network, peer support, teamwork, self-reliance, problem negotiation and self-care [ 38 , 63 , 74 ] play a positive role in reducing stress and boosting resilience. Consistent with research on previous epidemics/pandemics, dysfunctional attachment and maladaptive coping have been highlighted as risk factors for reduced mental well-being [ 86 ].…”

Protecting the healthcare workforce during COVID-19: a qualitative needs assessment of employee occupational health in the US national Veterans Health Administration

“…In particular, the need for mental health and psychosocial support, identified in our fifth theme, has been documented to be a robust challenge for HCW internationally. 13 23–25 Other explorations of EOH needs during COVID-19 also identified EOH issues faced by medical health workers and overlapped with this study in terms of identifying work stressors and ‘the need for supportive supervision’ as major issues. 26 Support for HCW mental health may be facilitated by organisational support and may underpin the psychological safety needed to nimbly respond to disasters.…”

“…In seeking to understand how best to support their expanding role, recent EOH publications on COVID-19 have relied on expert opinion 11 and literature review, 12 as well as a growing number of qualitative reports. 13 14 Major themes from the literature include potential negative impacts of employee anxiety about COVID-19 15 and downstream impacts of telework such as social isolation or physical/ergonomic issues. 12 EOH healthcare literature reinforces these more general predictions of anxiety (especially related to burn-out) and has additionally highlighted risk factors surrounding overwork (eg, documenting requirements for electronic health records - EHR) and the potential protective impact of positive leadership.…”