According to a new study, one of the major problems for nurses during the initial days of the pandemic was lack of sleep. In many cases, this led to anxiety and depression. The situation was very difficult at that time due to a lack of safety measures. The protection kits were not available in large numbers, and the front-line workers were not protected with vaccines. Due to all these factors, the everyday work routine of nurses was already stressed, which led to a lack of sleep.
Lack Of Sleep – Another Pandemic Problem For Nurses
Even during a normal situation, most nurses do not get enough sleep due to the nature of their work. An emergency case may pop up anytime at the hospital, and nurses have to be ready all the time to handle such a situation. Apart from that, nurses have to work in shifts to provide round-the-clock services to patients. Due to this, their regular working hours keep changing, and they need to adjust their sleep as per the shift allotted to them at the hospital.
Yet another biggest impact on the nurses during the initial stages of the pandemic was stress and trauma due to the uncertainty surrounding the Covid situation. In the first six months of the pandemic, there was no vaccine or treatment to handle the virus. Hundreds of people died every day, and nurses had never seen deaths of that magnitude for many years. Some of them described it as a situation similar to a war. In many hospitals, there was no space to keep the dead bodies, and they had to be piled in one corner to make way for treating other patients.
The latest research tries to understand the impact of all these on the mental health condition of nurses across the country. Nearly 55% of nurses reported lack of sleep as the main impact of all these conditions. The next big problem was anxiety, and more than half of them faced such issues. The depression symptoms were also predominant, and more than 20% of the participants reported such problems during the first six months of the pandemic.
On average, most of them got to sleep for only five hours or less every day, and they had to work long hours at the hospitals due to the huge inflow of patients. However, due to the trauma of watching so many people die every day at hospitals and other work-related stress, nurses could not get good sleep even in those five hours.
Experts feel that there is a direct link between lack of sleep and other symptoms like anxiety and depression. When a person does not get enough sleep for a long duration, it leads to anxiety in many cases. Experts also warn that it could lead to negative thinking and make the person emotionally vulnerable.
Researchers believe that hospitals can learn a lot from these findings and make the working conditions better for nurses in the future. The pandemic situation was a big surprise for the health system, and nobody was prepared to handle the virus. However, the situation has changed a lot since then, and hospitals can make suitable changes to their working method to provide the best support for nurses.
Due to the high-stress level, many nurses quit their jobs and look for other jobs even during normal circumstances. The hospitals should also train the nurses to manage stress to perform at their best in the long run. Apart from that, offering flexible working hours is also another good idea that can motivate nurses to work for a long time.
