Aims To explore the experiences of middle management nurses during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Switzerland. Background The outbreak of COVID‐19 has placed extraordinary demands on health care systems worldwide, which were found mostly unprepared. In this situation, middle management nurses played a strategic role because they acted as a link between organizational directives and the clinical practice. Methods This is a qualitative study that used a face‐to‐face interview with semi‐structured questions to learn about the experiences of middle management nurses during the COVID‐19 pandemic. After recruiting participants through purposeful sampling, data were analysed by means of thematic analysis using Nvivo 12. Results In total, 12 middle managers were interviewed. Data analysis identified four macro‐themes—Changes; Conflicting emotions; Relation; Role—and 20 sub‐themes. Conclusion The sudden challenges posed by the pandemic required middle managers to shift their focus from advanced planning to negotiation for meeting the rapidly evolving needs of nursing staff and top management, in order to guarantee the nursing team's well‐being and organizational efficiency. Implications for Nursing Management Lessons learned from the pandemic suggest the need for fine‐tuning organizational models and the importance that nurse middle managers affirm and uphold the core values for nursing and engage patient and staff advocacy.

It is crucial that palliative care nurses feel competent to practice their profession in accordance with ethical principles, to personalize care, to remain sensitive, to ensure respect, and to communicate effectively. The aim of this study was to verify that higher levels of perceived professional competency predict better individual and organizational outcomes, such as job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior. An online cross-sectional survey was conducted with 107 Italian palliative care nurses. Structural equation modeling technique was used for data analysis. The model fitted the data well. Professional competency was positively associated with both job satisfaction (β = 0.39) and organizational citizenship behavior (β = 0.53). The more confidence palliative care nurses have in their professional competency, the more they are satisfied with their job and engage in organizational citizenship behavior. Fostering professional competency in palliative nursing can help not only patients and their families but also the nurses themselves, the organization, and their coworkers.