The novel COVID-19: impacts on nursing professionals’ mental health?

Abstract

Objective:

To understand mental health impacts on nursing professionals in the face of interactions with the novel COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods:

This is a qualitative cut, from the macrosearch “ Estudo VidaMenta/Covid-19 ”, carried out with 719 nursing professionals residing in Brazil. Data collection was performed in a virtual environment using the snowball technique. For methodological analysis, the Discourse of the Collective Subject was used and for theoretical and philosophical interpretation, Symbolic Interactionism elements were used.

Results:

The collective discourse showed that nursing professionals’ mental health was affected by: interactions with the ‘new’ with the elaboration of meanings attributed to the pandemic; interactions with nursing care related to patient care; interactions with work demarcated by professional and institutional relationships.

Conclusion:

The findings confirm that there are impacts on nursing professionals’ mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic context that manifest themselves through the interaction with the ‘new’. In this interaction, they bring the advent of ‘pandemic nursing care’, permeated by specificities that have emerged and presents a possibility of changing the paradigm for nursing training guidelines, in technological advances in teaching and learning and in professional practice.

Keywords
Pandemics; Coronavirus infections; COVID-19; Mental health; Nurses practitioners