The potential for COVID-19 to contribute to compassion fatigue in critical care nurses.

Abstract

As of April 2020, more than 2 million people worldwide had tested positive for COVID-19, and more than 200,000 deaths are attributed to this virus. It is estimated that around 15% of patients diagnosed with COVID-19 will develop severe health complications, and around 5- 10% will require intensive level care due to the seriousness of the symptoms and the high mortality risk (3-5%)( Baud et al., 2020; Murthy, Gomersall, & Fowler, 2020). At the time of writing, COVID-19 has caused the need for hospitalisation of thousands of people due to the serious pneumonia type symptoms that result in extreme breathing difficulty.