Difficulties to invest in a more person-centered practice, less time to plan care, and weaknesses in patient safety culture were some of the impacts of the COVID-19 on Nursing practice.
These are some of the conclusions of a national study on the impact of the COVID-19 on professional nursing practice environments in hospital settings, conducted by researchers from CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research and the Nursing School of Porto (ESEP).
The researchers found that the pandemic had “a positive impact on the structural conditions of professional practice environments, particularly with regard to the provision of materials, clinical equipment, and information and communication technologies.”
On the other hand, this group points out a “negative trend” in processes, that is, in factors related to the design and delivery of nursing care.
Given the lack of nurses and the high workload, 60% of the nurses assume that their professional practice was “always” or “often” focused on the management of signs and symptoms of the disease, which may translate into a “setback” in the individualization of care, where the focus is on people.
In all, 76% of the nurses also marked as scarce the time to “plan, evaluate, and redesign care,” but in contrast, 83% positively evaluated “collaboration and teamwork,” this being one of the strongest areas.
Among the weakest points, assumed on average by 75% of the nurses, are “the insufficient number of nurses and specialist nurses in relation to the number of patients and their needs, the lack of involvement of nurses in the policies, strategies, and functioning of the institutions, and problems in the patient safety culture, which points to “the need for an emerging investment in these areas.
Olga Ribeiro, a researcher at CINTESIS/ESEP and the coordinator of the project “Positive Professional Environments4Nursing Practice”, considers that “it is time to invest in nurses’ involvement and sense of belonging to the institutions, to create conditions for their professional qualification, to recognize and value their skills and the role they play in healthcare teams.
In addition, she says, it is urgent “to define a policy to encourage innovation and research in nursing, adopting, for example, as a strategy the establishment of partnerships between the academic and clinical contexts.”
In this way, she believes “the improvement of the quality and safety of the care will be promoted, at a time when we are talking about the recovery of care activities not related to the COVID-19”.
The CINTESIS/ESEP researchers Clemente Sousa, Maria Filomena Cardoso, and Ana Reis, and nurses from several national hospitals also participated in this research.