Nurses as Direct Care Provider and their Mental Health Safety During the Covid-19 Pandemic Crisis

Nurses need mental balance to utilize, and optimize their professional skills in both community and clinical settings. Since inception of COVID-19 health crisis, the nursing profession has been in the frontline in the health sector to influence standards of healthcare at the expense of their own lives. Currently, nurses are in the midst of a global pandemic that poses a threat to their holistic wellbeing. COVID-19 broke since December 2019 from China and spread out globally, and nurses have had an unrelenting pressure at their duty posts and in their homes. As a result many have died due to the virus and others have had to cope with Isolation after testing positive threats which have posed and dented the mental wellbeing due to fear. The fear of feeling unsafe, and contracting the virus at work place while caring for infected people, or the possibility of infecting their family members. The new reality of home schooling of their children and the worsening economic situation due to the pandemic, and the lack of social contact with friends and colleagues. All these factors have affected negatively the mental wellbeing of nurses because it requires some adjustments for many of them. Thus, the focus of this review study was on nurses as a direct care provider and the effects of the covid pandemic on their mental wellbeing. The data sources for this reviewed study were from four databases which include: PubMed, Google Scholar, Science Direct and Cochrane. The study reviewed revealed a significant impact of COVID-19 pandemic crisis on mental health of nurses as direct healthcare provider. Considering that they too have families has compounded their situation. The implications call for a reorientation to help nurses to be more aware of this danger, and move the nursing professional bodies, organisation and family members to provide support seeing that the mental health of the nurses is threatened.

Keywords: Mental health; Covid-19; Pandemic crisis; Nursing; and productivity

Author(s): Adepeju Lateef, Elizabeth Joseph-Shehu

Abstract | PDF

Share This Article