Psychological effects of nursing professionals in front of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

On March 11, 2020, COVID-19 was defined by the World Health Organization as a pandemic, which refers to the geographic distribution of a pathology and not its severity. This term recognizes that there are currently outbreaks of COVID-19 in different countries and regions of the world. This article consists of an integrative review, in which it aims to discuss the psychological effects of nursing professionals in the face of the covid-19 pandemic, in order to explain the psychological damage brought by the pandemic to health professionals, more specifically, to the nurses who are on the front lines of COVID-19. In the continuous search for quality and good service provision, there is great psychological pressure and overload in the work environment, contributing to an unbalanced mental state, thus causing stress, anxiety and depression in professionals. In short, it is possible to conclude that understanding the responses of health professionals to a pandemic is quite complex, since the disease changes the individual's daily life and leads to a feeling of vulnerability due to several factors, such as: fear of getting sick and to die; loss of close people; loss of livelihood; and social exclusion for being associated with the disease.