A qualitative study on the psychological experience of caregivers of COVID-19 patients

By N. Sun, Luoqun Wei, Suling Shi, Dandan Jiao, Runluo Song, Lili Ma, Hongwei Wang, Chao Wang, Zhaoguo Wang, Yanli You and 2 more. American Journal of Infection Control, 2020

1,116 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is spreading rapidly, bringing pressure and challenges to nursing staff. Objective To explore the psychology of nurses caring for COVID-19 patients. Methods Using a phenomenological approach, we enrolled 20 nurses who provided care for COVID-19 patients in the First Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of Science and Technology from January 20, to February 10, 2020. The interviews were conducted face-to-face or by telephone and were analysed by Colaizzi's 7-step method. Results The psychological experience of nurses caring for COVID-19 patients can be summarized into 4 themes. First, negative emotions present in early stage consisting of fatigue, discomfort, and helplessness was caused by high-intensity work, fear and anxiety, and concern for patients and family members. Second, self-coping styles included psychological and life adjustment, altruistic acts, team support, and rational cognition. Third, we found growth under pressure, which included increased affection and gratefulness, development of professional responsibility, and self-reflection. Finally, we showed that positive emotions occurred simultaneously with negative emotions. Conclusions During an epidemic outbreak, positive and negative emotions of the front-line nurses interweaved and coexisted. In the early stage, negative emotions were dominant and positive emotions appeared gradually. Self-coping styles and psychological growth played an important role in maintaining mental health of nurses.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, General Health Professions, Radiological and Ultrasound Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a3fd9ba022f073a9750e2501a595bc51c5de7282

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Citations in the corpus

The mental health impact of the covid-19 pandemic on healthcare workers, and interventions to help them: A rapid systematic review (2020, neutral): “Sun et al. 67 interviewed twenty frontline nurses about their psychological experiences of frontline work.”
A rapid review of the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of healthcare workers: implications for supporting psychological well-being (2020, methodology): “Eighteen of the studies were from China, of which 8 were based in Wuhan, where the COVID-19 outbreak began.”