User:Kaylamummert/sandbox

Studies have shown that nurses wear a heavy amount of protective equipment to protect themselves from contracting the Coronavirus. This has created a change in being able to communicate effectively with colleagues. By wearing multiple masks and a face shield it creates a barrier making it more difficult to understand what is being stated through healthcare professionals and their patients. Wearing a tight face mask for twelve to fourteen hour shifts caused facial bruising to healthcare professionals. Hospitals did not have enough ventilators for patients who needed them, nurses and doctors did not have enough proper protective equipment for treating patients in order to protect themselves. One theme found during Paola, Valentina, and Rossella’s including many other authors' research study was that wearing proper protective equipment is physically draining. Nurses who were interviewed said time was exhausting shifts and difficult dressing/ undressing policies. A nurse who was interviewed stated “As an experience from a professional point of view, it is heavy because all those hours and all these proper protective equipment take away energy because you sweat so much, you get so tired, you suffer from thirst, you suffer from hunger, and you lose lucidity.”

Researchers Paola, Valentine, and Rossella found that healthcare professionals are experiencing an emotional impact on their mental health, causing stress, anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders. Theme one during their research included nurses feeling that they feared what this virus was and the impacts it would have on patients and themselves. A nurse stated “The fear of the unknown, the fear of facing something that is not known, not only from a clinical point of view, but also epidemiological… then initially fear, a disconcerting fear, we were not prepared, because we never thought this could not happen to us.” The last theme found throughout this research study was nurses feeling that they are not doing enough to help others. There has been a change in the meaning of “to care” nurses had to come to the realization that Covid-19 put everyone at risk for the chance of death. Nurses felt very alone due to losing patients so frequently and without the sympathy of family it made it even more difficult to deal with. During the interview expressed their feelings on how the pandemic affected their careers “I am not even able to ‘digest’ all of these deaths, that is to see again the body rolled up in the bed sheets, in the same sheets of the bed that we changed before, to say, not even a last change of bed sheets, a gesture of dignity, of treatment, to honour the body of what had been life.” This has caused a lot of grief and trauma for nurses and healthcare workers to deal with.