The impact of caring for COVID-19 patients on nurse professional identity: A cross-sectional study using propensity score analysis

COVID-19 impacted the suicidal ideation among health care workers and medical students: An interrupted time-series analysis of data from 30 countries

AIM

To investigate the impact of public health emergencies on the prevalence of suicidal ideation among healthcare workers (HCWs) and medical students.

METHODS

The prevalence of suicidal ideation among HCWs and medical students was searched for analysis. The platforms included PubMed, medRVix, bioRvix, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and Web of Science. Interrupted time-series analysis was employed to determine whether the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the prevalence and trends of suicidal ideation. To account for autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity, Newey-West standard errors were utilized with a lag of order one.

RESULTS

Seventy studies with 145,641 HCWs and medical students from 30 countries were included in the final analysis, with 30 studies before COVID-19 and 40 studies during the pandemic. Before the pandemic outbreak (April 2020), the monthly increasing rate was 0.063 % (95 % CI: -0.009 %, 0.135 %, z = 1.73, P = 0.084). The tendency of suicidal ideation prevalence increased by 1.116 % (95%CI: 0.888 %, 1.344 %, z = 9.60, P < 0.001). In other words, the calculated monthly growth rate of suicidal ideation after the pandemic outbreak is 1.179 % (95%CI: 0.968 %, 1.391 %, z = 10.93, P < 0.001) per month. The overall growing trend of prevalence of suicidal ideation during the pandemic is 1.896 % per month in America; 1.590 % in Europe; 0.443 % (95%CI: 0.213 %, 0.673 %, z = 3.77, P < 0.001) in Asia; 1.055 % in HCWs; and 0.645 % in medical students.

CONCLUSION

This study highlights that the COVID-19 pandemic can significantly impact the prevalence of suicidal ideation among HCWs and medical students, and the prevalence showed an upward trend.

Stretching oneself too thin and facing ethical challenges: Healthcare professionals' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUNDS

Most countries are facing increased pressure on healthcare resources. A better understanding of how healthcare providers respond to new demands is relevant for future pandemics and other crises.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to explore what nurses and doctors in Norway reported as their main ethical challenges during two periods of the COVID-19 pandemic: February 2021 and February 2022.

RESEARCH DESIGN

A longitudinal repeated cross-sectional study was conducted in the Western health region of Norway. The survey included an open-ended question about ethical challenges among doctors and nurses in hospital departments. Free-text comments were analysed using Systematic Text Condensation and also presented in a frequency table.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Ethical approval was granted by the Regional Research Ethics Committee in Western Norway (131,421). All participants provided consent when participating in the study.

RESULTS

In 2021, 249 and in 2022, 163 healthcare professionals responded to the open-ended question. Nurses and doctors reported three main categories of ethical challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) barriers that hindered them in acting as they ethically would have wanted to do; (2) priority-setting dilemmas linked to overtreatment, transfer of resources and ranking patient needs; and (3) workload expansion threatening work-life balance and employees' health. Category one comprised of resource barriers, regulatory barriers, system barriers, and personal barriers. Regulatory barriers, especially visitor restrictions for next-of-kin, were the most frequently reported in 2021. Resource barriers, related to the increased scarcity of qualified staff, were most frequently reported in 2022. Clinicians stretched themselves thin to avoid compromising on care, diagnostics, or treatment.

CONCLUSIONS

Developing clinicians' ability to handle and cope with limited healthcare resources is necessary. To foster resilience and sustainability, healthcare leaders, in collaboration with their staff, should ensure fair priority-setting and initiate reflections among doctors and nurses on what it implies to provide 'good enough' care.

Work Motivation: A Wall That Not Even the COVID-19 Pandemic Could Knock Down: Research Article

The emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 posed a new challenge, imposing extraordinary physical and psychological burdens on healthcare workers, clearly exacerbating and intensifying career abandonment. Objectives: The aim of our study was to explore the motivating factors among nurses serving during the coronavirus pandemic that they considered important in their profession despite the mental and physical stress brought about by the pandemic. Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted at the University of Pécs-Clinical Center-Regional Coronavirus Care Center between September 2022 and December 2022. We used non-random, expert, purposive sampling, recruiting healthcare workers who had spent at least 3 months working in a COVID ward (n = 196). Data collection was conducted by using an online, anonymous questionnaire, which included sociodemographic questions, the "Motivation at Work Scale", and a self-edited six-item questionnaire. Results: Regarding the 5-year probability of remaining in the healthcare field, nine participants (4.5%) will definitely leave the healthcare sector, twenty-seven participants (13.7%) are undecided, and seventy-eight participants (39.7%) will definitely stay in the healthcare field over the next 5 years. There is a positive, weak, but significant correlation between intrinsic motivation and the probability of leaving the profession within 5 years (r = 0.281; p < 0.05). We identified a significant, negative, and weak correlation between the number of revisited waves of the coronavirus and the fear of redeployment to the COVID ward (r = -0.273; p < 0.05). Conclusions: Despite the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, only a small percentage of nurses consider leaving the healthcare profession. Joy and enjoyment in their work were dominant factors even during the pandemic.

The relationship between social support and professional identity of health professional students from a two-way social support theory perspective: chain mediating effects of achievement motivation and meaning in life

BACKGROUND

Studies has suggested that receiving social support improves the professional identity of health professional students. According to the two-way social support theory, social support includes receiving social support and giving social support. However, the effect of the two-way social support on health professional students' professional identity has not been clarified yet.

METHODS

To explore the mechanism of how two-way social support affects health professional students' professional identity, an observational, cross-sectional study was conducted among a convenience and cluster sample of 1449 health professional students from two medical schools in western China. Measures included a short version of the two-way social support scale, a health professional students' professional identity questionnaire, an achievement motivation scale, and a meaning in life scale. Data were analyzed by use of SPSS26.0 software and PROCESSv4.0 plug-in.

RESULTS

Receiving social support, giving social support, achievement motivation, meaning in life, and professional identity were positively correlated with each other. Receiving and giving social support not only directly predicted health professional students' professional identity, but also indirectly predicted health professional students' professional identity through the mediating roles of achievement motivation and meaning in life, and the chain mediating roles of achievement motivation and meaning in life, respectively. The effectiveness of predicting health professional students' professional identity varied among different types of two-way social support, which could be depicted as two-way social support > mainly giving social support > mainly receiving social support > low two-way social support.

CONCLUSION

In the medical education, the awareness and ability of health professional students to receive and give social support should be strengthened. More attention should be drawn on the chain mediating effect of achievement motivation and meaning in life between two-way social support and professional identity. The current results shed new light on exploring effective ways of improving health professional students' professional identity, which suggested that more attention should be paid to the positive effects of mainly giving social support and two-way social support rather than only on the effects of receiving social support.