Trials Faced by Staff Nurses Caring for COVID-19 Patients

Abstract

Covid-19 has been identified to be the cause of deadly illness. It is hazardous, and crushed the population infected with the virus. This virus paralysed the daily work of public globally. Irre- spective of situation, whether regular or during disaster, it is nurses who belong to the frontline and are accountable for comprehensive nursing care for all variety of patients. The present study aimed to assess the challenges experienced by staff nurses; correlate the aspects of challenges experienced by staff nurses; and associate aspects of challenges with selected demographic variables. A descriptive study was adopted for the present study using quantitative approach. Permission was sought from hospitals. The tool was distributed to the staff nurses after explain- ing the purpose of the study. Purposive sampling technique was solicited. The calculated sample size was 244, however, 270 nurses completed the self reports. The questionnaire was tested for reliability using Cronbach' s alpha for each aspect and it ranged from 0.71 to 0.82. Questionnaire consisted of 36 items and 7 aspects. The findings showed that majority (72.6%) of staff nurses self reported to have faced the challenge of physical exhaustion and mental stress' and the least reported challenge (22.2%) was the aspect of fear and anxiety. On further computation, it was found all the seven aspects i.e. fear and anxiety, caring aspects, physical exhaustion and mental stress, personal sacrifice, facilities and resources, availability of supports and ethical challenges were correlated at 0.01 level. With regard to association, not all aspects were found to have significant association. It is concluded that a profound understanding of these challenges can help health care organisations to resolve these challenges and provide evidence-based information and implement psychological interventions.