ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic did not only have an enormous impact on the wellbeing of intensive care unit (ICU) patients and their family members, but also on nurses’ wellbeing. The surge of COVID-19 patients, scarcity of protective equipment, anxiety surrounding an unknown virus, and the shortage of personnel due to loss of (mentally) ill personnel and colleagues that left their job causing a deterioration in working conditions, moral dilemmas and stress. The marathon length of the pandemic with high frequency and intensity of distressing events leads to increased symptoms of burnout, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among ICU clinicians (Azoulay et al. , 2020, Bruyneel et al. , 2021, Crowe et al. , 2021, Heesakkers et al. , 2021, Kok et al. , 2021, Meynaar et al. , 2021, Sanliturk, 2021). For decades, clinicians’ mental wellbeing has been high on the agenda. Increased working hours, nurse-patient ratio, high workload and feelings of failure in patient treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic increased the urgency to enhance the mental resilience of healthcare professionals to be prepared for long-lasting pandemics. Mental illness has a tremendous impact on the lives of individuals, including shame, burden for their family and lose of work including financial consequences. Also, its societal and financial impact is enormous, with a shortage of healthcare professionals as worst-case scenario. Mental illness is a horrible human ache especially since it is preventable (Linzer and Poplau, 2021).
Fuente: Intensive and Critical Care Nursing
