RESEARCHERS and clinicians from Scotland are to investigate how the pandemic has affected stress levels in NHS intensive care nurses across the UK.
A team led by the University of Aberdeen has been awarded a grant of more than £184,000 from the National Institute for Health Research as part of a £5.5 million investment funding nine new research projects into the long-term impact of Covid-19.
The Critical Care and Re-Deployed Nurses: the impact of Covid-19 on work-related stress study, dubbed Candid, will see teams investigate how the pressures caused by the pandemic have affected stress and wellbeing in nurses working in critical care across the UK.
They will also look at support services offered to nurses during the pandemic to explore how successful these have been.
Nurses working across Scotland and three English critical care units will be asked to complete a questionnaire and take part in an in-depth interview to assess how the pandemic has affected them at work. Their responses will then be compared to a similar study conducted just before the onset of coronavirus.
“Covid-19 has placed great pressure on nurses who have been working within extremely challenging circumstances,” said Aberdeen University health psychologist Professor Diane Dixon, who will jointly lead the study.
“This includes delivering care whilst wearing cumbersome PPE, increased patient mortality rates, communicating and supporting relatives at a distance, all in addition to dealing with the potential risks to their own and their family’s health.
“It is important to understand how nurses working in critical care have experienced and been affected by the pandemic as it’s possible that the physical and psychological wellbeing of nurses working critical care during the pandemic has been affected and in turn, their intention to continue in critical care nursing reduced.
“We hope that these results could help further our understanding of how the impact of stress can be mitigated by personal, job and support resources, so that the NHS can be better prepared to support and retain critical care staff.”
Study co-leader Dr Janice Rattray, honorary reader in acute and critical care nursing from the University of Dundee, said: “Supporting the well-being of nurses working in critical care is crucial, and to do this effectively we need to understand fully the impact of the pandemic on critical care (CCNs) and redeployed nurses.
“By identifying specific stressors, their importance and how these influence outcomes in CCNs and redeployed nurses and their NHS organisations will allow us to do this.”
Professor Amanda Croft, the Scottish Government’s chief nursing officer, added: “We are committed to improving the wellbeing of health and social care staff across Scotland and have taken immediate action to provide support while they continue respond to the pandemic. We are also working to build a sustainable culture that will continue to prioritise staff wellbeing in the future.”
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