COVID-19 CHALLENGES TO EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT NURSES
Keywords:
COVID 19, Emergency department, Nursing, Crisis communicationAbstract
COVID 19 pandemic has impacted all the elements of the healthcare systems. One of the most affected are the emergency departments of the hospitals that have to identify, triage and isolate COVID 19 symptomatic and suspected patients. These have to be done without jeopardizing the routine extremely stressful lifesaving activities to patients in emergencies not related to the ongoing pandemic.
In order to respond to the novel requirements nurses into the emergency departments have to perform several additional duties.
The objective of this study is to analyze the additional duties performed by the nurses into the emergency departments in response to the COVID 19 challenges.
Materials and Methods By the means of the descriptive method the new COVID 19 pandemic related challenges are summarized based on the clinical reports and published articles. Comparative method is applied for matching the requirements to the activities performed at Emergency department of the University Hospital "St. George" Plovdiv, by the nurses focused on the COVID 19 pandemic emergency medical structure management.
Results and discussion Based on the results obtained through the performed analyses five groups of newly established nursing activities are presented.
The most significant are the required additional activities related to the communication. The nurses are playing central role into the crisis communication. They have to acquire and implement skills for transferring the medical doctors referrals to the patients, to the population at risk regarding what they have to do and what not to do in order to recover or not to become infected.
Nurses into the departments have to communicate into comprehensive manner the requirements regarding the identification of the hazards and required preventive measures to be implemented by the medics, in order their safety and security to be assured.
The increased demands and restricted time for patients management, because of the increased patients influx into emergency departments limit the possibility of communication between the medical doctors during the shifts, therefore, the nurses are requested to be the link between the different working posts.
Pivotal is the role of the nurses into the vaccination campaign as well - not only into administration of the vaccines but and for comprehensively explaining the benefits of vaccines and addressing the population concerns regarding the possible side, undesired effects.
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