gms | German Medical Science

Background: The existing SARS-Cov-19 pandemic poses multiple challenges for professional nurses. Due to the combination of high pandemic-related work demands and low resources, strong insecurities can be observed among nurses. In addition, limitations in the quality of nursing care lead to a sense of a threatening deprofessionalisation of the nursing profession (Begerow, Michaelis & Gaidys, 2020 [1]).

Aim: The aim is to explicate the experiences of the nurses, as well as the subjectively interpreted empowering as well as stressful situations. The findings contribute to the development of nursing as a profession and the future improvement of nursing care.

Method: The questions of the study intend to describe the subjective perceptions of nurses. Therefore, a qualitative method in the sense of a web-based qualitative survey is used (Jansen, 2010 [2]). The data analysis is carried out with the summarising content analysis of Mayring (2015).

Results: The results reported are based on the survey period 03.04.2020 to 25.03.2021 in which n = 3424 nurses participated in the survey. The following categories could be analysed: "constant anxiety", workload, impact on the quality of care and ethical conflicts. The nurses describe working conditions that partly endanger their own health and that of the patients, and which can lead to ethical conflicts.

Conclusions: Concluding from the presentations, institutional framework conditions for a nursing and ethical debate for clinical care decisions must be developed and structural and nursing science concepts for a clear attribution of autonomy and responsibility for nurses must be introduced.