Psychological distress and professional quality of life in nurses caring for patients with COVID-19

BACKGROUND: During a pandemic, stressful situations cause nurses to suffer compassion fatigue and burnout in addition to psychological distress. The aim of this study was to determine psychological distress and professional quality of life in nurses caring for patients with COVID-19, and to evaluate the effects of psychological distress and some risk factors on professional quality of life.METHODS: This online study was conducted with 214 nurses, between November 2020 and December 2020, in Turkiye. Data were collected with the Personal Information Form, Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale and Professional Quality of Life Scale. For the analysis, t tests, ANOVA, Kruskal Wallis-H Test, Pearson's correlation, multivariate linear regressionRESULTS: The nurses had high levels of depression, anxiety and stress. Nurses' compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue and burnout levels were found as medium. Also, sex, age, marital status, the number of children, economic status, education level, length of service in the profession, weekly working hours, depression and stress levels were determined to be significant predictive factors for nurses' professional quality of life.CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that nurses are under a considerable risk for psychological distress, compassion fatigue and burnout. Training, counseling and support programs are important to protect nurses' mental health and to increase the quality of professional life.