Being a Nurse During a Worldwide Pandemic: A Qualitative Study Exploring Nurses' Perceived Challenges and Expectations During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Turkey

Background: Determining the health-care experiences, problems, and difficulties of nurses during a pandemic is important to shape the measures of nursing care management. This study aimed to better understand clinical nurses' challenges and expectations surrounding coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Methods: A qualitative study with semi-structured interviews was conducted. The study sampling comprised of 48 clinical nurses who have worked in pandemic hospitals. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and evaluated based on the content analysis method. Results: In this study, 6 main themes were determined as intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional/organizational, community, policies and system challenges, and expectations. Based on the results, nurses' perceived challenges were psychological distress, dilemma, safety and security issues, workload increased, disruption in family and social relationships, stigmatization encountered, and not making their voices heard enough due to the lack of nurses in the scientific advisory board. Nurses' expectations were determined as improvement of their personal rights and institutional psychosocial support. Discussion: The results of this study can be used as a guide for action plans to support nurses, develop health-care protocols for safe patient care, and create family and pandemic support systems.