COVID-19: Healthcare Worker Sorrows and Strengths

by Christine Grady, RN Ph.D., and Connie Ulrich, Ph.D. RN FAAN In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Claudius famously notes “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” Today, during the coronavirus pandemic, we are seeing and hearing “battalions” of sorrow reflected on the faces and in the voices of nurses and other healthcare workers, as well as from patients and families across the global community. Nurses and other healthcare workers are often working under grueling workplace conditions. They are physically and mentally exhausted from the complexity of care needs for COVID-19 patients, from staffing shortages, inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE), medicines, and life-sustaining technologies, from witnessing firsthand racial-based disparities, from being alone with dying patients without the support of patients’ families, anguishing over necessary but tragic ethical decisions, and harboring mistrust of a broken system that was meant to protect them.  …
Source: blog.bioethics.net - Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Tags: Featured Posts professional ethics Professionalism Public Health #covid19 #diaryofaplagueyear COVID-19 nurses nursing Source Type: blogs