ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is now a major public health emergency in the world. Nurses as key members of the COVID-19 patient care team are exposed to most challenges caused by the disease. As exploring the experiences of nurses as patient supporters and caregivers can play an important role in improving the quality of care for patients with COVID-19 disease, the present study explored the experiences of nurses caring for patients with COVID-19. METHODS: The study employed a qualitative design. This study employed purposive sampling to select 10 nurses with bachelors and master's degrees in nursing who were taking care of patients with COVID-19 in ICUs or inpatient wards in southern Iran. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The collected data were analyzed using the qualitative content analysis procedure proposed by Graneheim and Lundman. RESULTS: The analysis of the data revealed four main themes and ten sub-themes: A) physical, psychological, and social burden of care (excessive workload; fear, anxiety, worry; unpleasant social experiences; compassion fatigue) B) unmet needs (personal needs and professional needs) C) positive experiences (pleasant social experiences and inner satisfaction), and D) strategies (problem-solving strategies and stress symptom mitigation strategies). CONCLUSIONS: An analysis of the themes and subthemes extracted in this study suggested that the nurses who participated in this study faced many personal and professional challenges. Therefore, health officials and specialists need to pay special attention to nurses' challenges and needs.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to evaluate the knowledge, attitude, practice, and clinical recommendations of health care workers (HCWs) towards COVID-19. METHODS: In this systematic review study, international databases (Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus) were searched for the relevant studies published in English from the inception of databases until July 30, 2020. Hoy et al.'s tool was used to evaluate the quality of studies. All search steps, screening, selection of studies, quality assessment, and data extraction were performed separately by two researchers. RESULTS: Out of 3460 articles searched, 28 articles conducted on 16,427 HCWs were included in the study. Most of the HCWs had good knowledge (72.2%), a positive attitude (70.9%), and good practice (78.8%) towards COVID-19. The most important clinical recommendation to improve knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) was to provide HCWs with a periodic training program regarding COVID-19. The most important source of information for HCWs on COVID-19 was social networks. CONCLUSIONS: Despite HCWs' good knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP), it is recommended to periodically review KAP and carry out further studies in different countries as well. It is also recommended to use social media to improve KAP.