Laboring Health: Death Anxiety and Depression Levels of Nurses Working in Covid-19 Intensive Care

Filiz Özkan,İpek Turhan,Ömer Ödek

doi:10.19127/bshealthscience.1003294

Abstract

This study was aimed to be conducted to determine the death anxiety and death-related depression of nurses who work in the Covid-19 intensive care units. The study was carried out descriptive study with 264 nurses working in 11 Covid-19 intensive care units within the pandemic department of a hospital. Data were collected by Nurse Introduction, Templer Death Anxiety Scale and Death Depression Scale. It was found that the anxiety levels of the nurses were high and their depression levels were moderate; The Death Anxiety Scale and Death Depression Scale scores of the nurses who did not feel any emotion related to the deaths of Covid patients were higher than those who felt sadness and anxiety (P

Highlights

Covid-19 emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, which is the capital of the Hubei region and one of the largest industrial and commercial centers in China
It was found that 29.2% of the nurses have faced death every day, 87.1% had no difficulty in giving care to the dying patient, 28.4% of them did not feel any emotion while giving care to a dying patient, and 15.9% of them did not feel any emotion while giving care to a patient dying due to the COVID-19 (Table 1)
A statistically significant difference was determined between death depression and gender, the emotion experienced while caring for the patient who died due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the emotion experienced while caring for the dying patient, and the frequency of encountering death (Table 4)

Summary

Introduction

Covid-19 emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, which is the capital of the Hubei region and one of the largest industrial and commercial centers in China. Nurses have started to provide end-of-life care frequently, in addition to their fear of death, and have become the person who meets all the needs of patients who do not share the same environment with anyone, including their families (Jackson et al, 2020). It has been determined that health workers, especially nurses, reported high levels of anxiety, stress, emotional fatigue and depressive symptoms in studies (Al Maqbali, et al, 2020; Anmella et al, 2020; Lai et al, 2020; Zerbini, et al, 2020). With the Covid-19 pandemic, the changing status of intensive care workers, who are in the very high-risk group, should be determined. It has been proven by studies that working in a high-risk group, working in a BSJ Health Sci / Filiz ÖZKAN et al

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