Experiences, emotional responses, and coping skills of nursing students as auxiliary health workers during the peak COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative study

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis in Spain has exacerbated the shortage of nursing staff torespond to increasing healthcare demands. For this reason, nursing students were requested tocollaborate voluntarily as auxiliary health staff. This emergency has led to mental health problemsin health professionals, hence the relevance of coping techniques. The objectives of this study wereto explore the experiences and emotional responses of final-year nursing students who volunteeredto carry out healthcare relief tasks during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identifythe coping strategies they adopted to deal with this situation. A qualitative study was conductedin the constructivist paradigm. Purposive sampling was used, and twenty-two studentsparticipated in semi-structured interviews, which were then content-analysed. The study isreported using the COREQ checklist. Five themes emerged in the ‘Experiences and emotionalresponse’ dimension (context, patients, emotions and feelings, risk of contagion, and personalsatisfaction), and three themes emerged in the ‘Coping strategies’ dimension strategies in the workenvironment, in daily life and personal life. Although the students expressed negative emotionsdue to the highly complex context and lack of professional experience, they evaluated theexperience positively in terms of learning and usefulness. Most notably, the students employedadaptive coping strategies to deal with the pandemic.