Friganović, A., Kurtović, B., & Selič, P. (2021). A cross-sectional multicentre qualitative study exploring attitudes and burnout knowledge in intensive care nurses with burnout. Slovenian Journal of Public Health, 60(1), 46-54.
The purpose of this study was to determine the experiences and knowledge of burnout in nurses with burnout. Friganović et al.’s (2021) research is founded on the premise that despite intensive care unit (ICU) nurses being exposed to prolonged stress, no significant burnout policy has been established to address the issue. This study targeted ICU nurses working in cardiac surgery, general surgery, paediatric and neurology in five hospitals within Zagreb. Friganović et al.’s (2021) study utilized a qualitative phenomenological design with semi-structured interviews which targeted a sample size of 620 ICU nurses from five university hospitals. The participation in the study was on a voluntary basis, but the participants were required to have a minimum of 6 months experience working in ICU.
This study is significant in the sense that it strives to address the silent problem of nurse burnout which is one of the main causes of poor mental health in nursing. The study findings show that the participants had a poor sense of knowledge of burnout. The results further indicated that nurses did not know how to handle the adverse effects of burnout. Therefore, this study is of great value to policy makers because it aims at showing the root cause of mental health. However, the only limitation of this study revolves around the qualitative nature – it targeted ICU nurses in a specific region. This limits the possibility of applying the study’s conclusions to the entire population of ICU nurses.
The general observation of the authors, after successfully conducting this study, was that there is a need for different levels of nursing education system to work together in order to address the issue of burnout. Similarly, Friganović et al. (2021) emphasized the need for nurses to modify their coping strategies. Overall, this research lends evidence to the issue of poor mental health in nursing – it identifies burnout as the main contributing fact to mental health problems.
Moradi, Y., Baghaei, R., Hosseingholipour, K., & Mollazadeh, F. (2021). Challenges experienced by ICU nurses throughout the provision of care for COVID‐19 patients: A qualitative study. Journal of nursing management, 29(5), 1159-1168.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the challenges ICU nurses experience in the course of caring for COVID-19 patients. Moradi et al. (2021) targeted nurses working in medical ICUs of COVID-29 in Urmia, Iran. The inclusion criterion was based on the willingness to participate with a requirement of at least one year of critical care experience. The authors utilized a qualitative descriptive approach which guided them in exploring the challenges ICU nurses experienced while caring for their patients. To achieve the desired results, they used semi-structured face-to-face interviews in collecting data on a sample size of 17 ICU nurses.
This study is of great significance, especially to the healthcare professionals – a clear understanding of the challenges ICU nurses face will guide them in adopting measures to resolve them. The findings show that nurses often experience physical exhaustion, psychological burden and lack of support from the organization. This will inform the healthcare facilities why it is important to support the healthcare workers by providing psychological interventions on to handle emergencies and pandemics. However, this study was limited in the sense that it only targeted the experiences of Iranian nurses and was purely done on short-term basis – the authors could not identify future challenges.
The main conclusion arrived at by the authors is that ICU face a lot of challenges in the course of providing care to COVID-19 patients. Some of these challenges include physical exhaustion, uncertainty, lack of support from their organizations and psychological burden. Moradi et al. (2021) underscored the need to develop evidence-based systems to protect the healthcare workers. Overall, this research lends evidence to support the issue of poor mental health was which was a major issue that nurses faced during COVID-19 pandemic.
References
Friganović, A., Kurtović, B., & Selič, P. (2021). A cross-sectional multicentre qualitative study exploring attitudes and burnout knowledge in intensive care nurses with burnout. Slovenian Journal of Public Health, 60(1), 46-54. Web.
Moradi, Y., Baghaei, R., Hosseingholipour, K., & Mollazadeh, F. (2021). Challenges experienced by ICU nurses throughout the provision of care for COVID‐19 patients: A qualitative study. Journal of nursing management, 29(5), 1159-1168. Web.