Intensive Care Nurses’ Perception about Working Conditions during COVID-19

Abstract

Introduction: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic revealed the precarious infrastructure of healthcare and human resources worldwide, more evident in the intensive care unit due to the high demand of critical patients, the few available beds and the deficit of workers caused by the lockdown. All this produced a greater workload, increased responsibilities and risks for intensive care nurses, circumstances that required rapid institutional responses for caring first-line resources.

Objective: To identify intensive care nurses' perception about working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: A quantitative, descriptive-correlational and retrospective study was conducted with 80 intensive care nurses from a fourth-level EsSalud hospital in Peru. A questionnaire was applied (Aiken’s validity = 0.93; Cronbach’s alpha reliability = 0.73). The data were processed using IBM-SPSS-V27, presented in statistical tables (median/frequency/percentage), and by means of descriptive analysis. According to the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, they deviate from the normal curve, deciding on Spearman's rho correlation to associate age and working conditions.

Results: The age median of the intensive care nurses was 41-50 years. The working conditions were perceived as unfavorable by 60 % and, according to age, 33.75 % were 26-40 years, 21.25 % were 41-50 years, and 5 % were 51-64 years. The perceptions were perceived as unfavorable with respect to ergonomic (91.25 %), organizational (78.75 %), psychosocial (68.75 %) and physical (65 %) conditions; biosafety was favorable (70 %). A moderate correlation was found between age and organizational conditions (p = 0.431), while there was a low correlation with respect to biosafety (p = 0.226) and ergonomic conditions (p = 0.249).

Conclusions: The working conditions of intensive care nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic were perceived as unfavorable by those younger than 50 years and favorable by those older than 51 years.