The nurse faculty role: A lived experience of mentoring nurses while coping with anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

UNLABELLED

WHAT IS KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT?: Anxiety is common in women, nurses and nurse educators and can negatively impact overall mental well-being and work-life satisfaction. Anxiety increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hope is a personal resource that can be employed to help cope with anxiety. Professional identity, 'our why', is important to recognize and revisit as a way to add value to daily work in anxious times. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS TO EXISTING KNOWLEDGE?: Compassion fatigue has contributed to burnout and turnover of nurses and nursing faculty. Knowing our 'why' helps understand the motivation in our work. Using hope as a personal resource, and sharing my lived experience, could be useful to other nursing faculty struggling with anxiety. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR MENTAL HEALTH NURSING?: There is a need for mental health resources within healthcare and education systems to support nurses and nurse educators not only during the COVID-19 pandemic but through future healthcare crises. Support programmes and interventions need to be developed to sustain and retain both nurses and nursing faculty.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Providing patient care and nurse education in today's healthcare environment is high-stress, often resulting in high-anxiety among both nurses and nurse educators. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on nurse faculty is largely unexplored.

AIMS

The aim was to share the experience of living and work working with anxiety in the nurse faculty role during the COVID-19 pandemic.

MATERIALS & METHODS: This is a lived experience narrative of one nurse faculty member.

RESULTS

Through daily purposeful self-motivation and reflection, yoga, and brief outdoor respites, the author was able to strengthen professional identity, to see value in her work and to activate the personal resource of hope (Nursing Management, 52, 2021, 56; Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 93, 2020, 187).

DISCUSSION

'Nursing faculty are essential to the profession' and likely experienced 'emotional exhaustion' during the pandemic (Nursing Education Perspectives, 42, 2021, 8) in their efforts to buoy students. It needs to be acknowledged that nursing faculty can experience anxiety, secondary trauma (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17, 2020, 8358) and compassion fatigue, through listening to students' experiences and offering reinforcement during chaotic times.

CONCLUSION

Little is known about what nursing faculty experienced as they attempted to support students (Nursing Education Perspectives, 42, 2021, 285). It is hoped that by sharing this lived experience, nurses and nurse faculty will understand how employing hope as a personal resource and re-engaging with their professional identity will help them cope with the significant stresses that future healthcare pandemics or disasters may bring.