ABSTRACT
Background: The shortage of nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary to recruit nursing students to provide care. Although research suggests that the care that students provided was invaluable, their views on ethical concerns and dilemmas related to the duty of care remain unexplored.Objectives: Using predefined hypotheses, a cross-sectional study was conducted to explore students' well-being and views on the duty of care.Method: Between May and June 2020, Chilean and Spanish nursing students participated in a web-based survey, including the 5-Item WHO Well-Being Index (WHO-5) and views on the duty of care reported through a scale related to beliefs about pandemics. Student's t-test, Mann–Whitney U test, χ2 tests, and multivariable log-linear analysis were used to explore differences between nursing students in Spain and Chile and to examine the relationships between categorical variables.Results: Students (N = 183) from both countries self-reported low levels of psychological well-being (WHO-5, M = 10.8, SD = 4.3). Concerning ethical statements, although most students from both countries (71%) agreed that nurses and doctors have a duty of care, significant differences were found concerning the statement that every healthcare worker has a duty to work during a health emergency (39% agreement in Chile and 74% in Spain;p < 0.001).Conclusions: Students reported emotional and ethical challenges associated with the pandemic. Besides receiving help to deal with ethical challenges and given that a significant proportion of students from both countries reported low well-being, we recommend developing strategies to mitigate and enhance students' well-being.
ABSTRACT
Nurses' well-being has been increasingly recognised due to the ongoing pandemic. However, no validation scales measuring nurses' well-being currently exist. Thus, we aimed to validate the WHO-5 Well-Being Index (WHO-5) in a sample of nurses. A cross-sectional multinational study was conducted, and a total of 678 nurses who worked during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain (36.9%), Chile (40.0%) and Norway (23.1%) participated in this study. The nurses completed the WHO-5, the Patient Health Questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-2 (GAD-2) and three questions about the quality of life (QoL). The WHO-5 demonstrated good reliability and validity in the three countries. Cronbach's alphas ranged from 0.81 to 0.90. High correlations were found between the WHO-5 and the psychological well-being dimension of QoL, and negative correlations between the WHO-5 and PHQ-2. The unidimensional scale structure was confirmed in all the countries, explaining more than 68% of the variance. The item response theory likelihood ratio model did not show discernible differences in the WHO-5 across the countries. To conclude, the WHO-5 is a psychometrically sound scale for measuring nurses' well-being during a pandemic. The scale showed strong construct validity for cross-cultural comparisons; however, more research is required with larger sample sizes.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Pandemics , COVID-19/epidemiology , Cross-Sectional Studies , Humans , Psychometrics , Quality of Life , Reproducibility of Results , Surveys and Questionnaires , World Health OrganizationABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has created great uncertainty around the world, and due to the pandemic, nurses have been exposed to an increase in highly stressful clinical situations. This study examines the relationships between perceived stress and emotional disorders among nurses who have provided direct patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic and explores the mediating role of resilience in these relationships. In an online cross-sectional design, we asked Spanish nurses (N = 214) to complete self-reported scales, and we performed correlation and mediation analyses between perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale, PSS-4), resilience (Wagnild Resilience Scale, RS-14), wellbeing (World Health Organization Wellbeing Index, five items, WHO-5), anxiety (PHQ-2) and depression (GAD-2). The nurses self-reported moderate levels of perceived stress, considerable psychological distress and high resilience. We found resilience to be significantly negatively correlated with the reported levels of perceived stress, anxiety and depression (p < 0.001). The mediating analysis revealed that resilience played a protective role in the direct relationships of stress with depression, anxiety, and psychological distress. To conclude, our findings supported the hypothesis that resilience mediated the relationship between stress and mental health.