COVID-19 has left nurses before our era emotionally exhausted, anxious and desperate: survey

VANCOUVER The vast majority of BC nurses fear they will contract COVID-19 at work or bring it home with them, according to a new study that has found many front-line workers feel depressed, anxious and emotionally exhausted.

The survey, conducted by BC University School of Nursing and funded by the BC Nurses Union, took an example of nurses’ psychological health during the pandemic and found significantly worsening conditions compared to the results of a similar study by the end of last year.

For Farinaz Havaei, the study’s lead researcher and an assistant professor at UBC School of Nursing, the main concern is that deteriorating nurses’ emotional health may affect their ability to provide effective patient care.

If I am not 100 percent, if I feel weak and unfocused, if I am constantly anxious, am I able to think critically and care for my patients to the best of my ability? Tha Havaei. The implications here are beyond the nursing workforce. It certainly includes the nursing workforce, but it is also concerned with the health and safety of the general public seeking care and nursing services.

The survey found that 41 percent of nurses are depressed, an increase of 10 percent from the results from a year ago. And nearly as many, 38 percent, experienced anxiety also 10 percent from a year ago. A 10 percent nail represents another 5,000 nurses, given that the workforce is about 50,000 strong, Havaei said.

Emotional fatigue has also dragged on since last year, with 60 percent of those surveyed reporting feeling it. That was up from 56 percent in 2019.

About 86 percent of nurses say they are extremely concerned about bringing COVID-19 home and 80 percent think they will contract it at work.

Meanwhile, about half of the nurses do not believe that their personal protective equipment is of high quality and two in five believe that there is not enough access to it to perform their job safely.

The vast majority of nurses in the province are in direct care providers who are in direct one-on-one contact with patients, Havaei said. When I see these numbers, [I think], What does this do to nurses’ decisions to stay at work? We already know there is a shortage of nurses in the province.

More than half of the nurses surveyed reported inadequate staffing and a quarter said they had been told to work despite possible or confirmed exposure to COVID-19.

About 41 percent of nurses said they believed there was poor transparency about pandemic organizational decisions, and 27 percent said they had experienced changes to COVID-19-related protocols on a daily, or more frequent, basis.

Christine Sorensen, president of the nurses union, said the findings were disturbing and exposed the severe damage the pandemic had done to the nurses’ personal and professional lives. Even before COVID-19 was hit, nurses were affected by the burn due to high workloads, she said. The pandemic has been added to this.

What this study tells me is that it is more important than ever for mental health support to be provided to nurses and all health care nurses as they prepare for COVID-19 this fall, Sorensen said.

Sorensen said she welcomed all efforts made by the government to provide enough PPE for the province, but through all this pandemic there has been limited access.

When nurses do not have unrestricted access to the personal protective equipment they need, this is putting patients and nurses at risk, she said.

The survey, entitled A Provincial Survey of Nurses COVID-19 Experiences and Psychological Health and Safety in BC, Canada, was conducted in June and July 2020 and included 4,523 nurses.