Nurses’ experiences of providing care to suspected COVID-19 patients in a resource limited setting

Abstract

The emergence of the corona virus disease (COVID-19) has exacerbated the strain on health systems across the globe, particularly the already overburdened and fragile health systems in resource constrained countries. The study aimed at exploring the experiences of nurses providing care to suspected COVID-19 patients in a resource limited setting whilst awaiting COVID-19 test results. It adopted a descriptive phenomenological approach to explore and describe lived experiences of nurses who provided care to patients suspected of having COVID-19. In-depth individual telephone interviews were used to collect data from ten nurses. Using judgemental purposive sampling, the sample size of ten nurses was determined by data saturation. The healthcare workers experienced psychological challenges due to the prevailing environment associated with fear of contracting the virus and witnessing patients’ painful experiences of discomfort. Material resource limitations also had a bearing on the quality of patient care. Based on the findings of this study, the government and Ministry of Health and Child Care should address gaps associated with resource limitations and provide support to providers of care in the COVID-19 context.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• nurses
• provision of care
• suspected COVID-19 cases
• challenges

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

COVID-19 has impacted negatively on fragile healthcare systems in resource poor settings. It has exposed challenges facing healthcare workers in dealing with pandemics like these. Faced with an increase in their workload healthcare providers have had to undertake task shifting. This is critical for policy formulation and planning purposes. Nurse managers and administrators would need to think outside the box in order to effectively respond to the pandemic and the challenges it poses. Often, they operate with shoestring budgets that have no accommodation for emergencies like the COVID-19 which require resources such as lots of oxygen, laboratory testing and medication unique to the virus. Equally significant and critical is the support system (which is often lacking) for those in the frontline in the provision of care during such an emergency. The healthcare systems are often caught unprepared and yet adjustments, innovations and shifting of resources are required for effective emergency response.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to all nurses who participated in this study

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Idah Moyo

Dr Idah Moyo holds several Nursing diplomas, BSc and MSc in Nursing Science as well as a PhD in Health Studies. She has vast public health sector and international NGO management experience and is a Public Health Specialist with focus on HIV programming. Dr Moyo has experience as both a qualitative and quantitative researcher. She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK and a Research Fellow for the Department of Health Studies, University of South Africa. Her research interests include HIV, Key Populations, Sexual & Reproductive Health, and COVID-19.

She has published research papers on:

• Experiences of HIV positive women in accessing PMTCT services in Zimbabwe.

• A model for enhancing prevention of mother to child HIV transmission in a low resource setting.

• Experiences of key populations in accessing HIV care services in the Zimbabwe, preCOVID-19 and during the COVID-19 context.

• Challenges encountered by healthcare workers during COVID-19 in Zimbabwe and South Africa.