The psychological experiences of Lebanese ground zero front-line nurses during the most recent COVID-19 outbreak post Beirut blast: A qualitative study

Mirna Fawaz and Mohammad Itani

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2022, vol. 68, issue 4, 754-761

Abstract: Background: For the past 2 months the number of COVID-19 cases in Lebanon has been on the rise, while frontline nurses after the Beirut Blast of August 4th have been practicing through limited resources and a challenging context. Aim: This paper aims at exploring the psychological experiences of Lebanese frontline nurses serving at ground zero hospital during the current COVID-19 outbreak. Setting: This study was carried out in three main ground-zero hospitals in Beirut which are receiving COVID-19 cases. Method: This study have employed a phenomenological exploratory qualitative research design, where virtual interviews were conducted with 18 frontline nurses during the second week of January 2021. Results: Thematic analysis of the data expressed by the frontline nurses working in the approached ground-zero hospitals gave rise to five themes, namely ‘helplessness and impending doom’, ‘increased mortality rates and depressive mood’, ‘fear of death and obsessive thinking’, ‘flashbacks, panic, and incompetence’, and ‘public recklessness, governmental responsibility, and anger‘. Conclusion: The frontline nurses working at ground zero hospitals in Beirut are facing significant psychological challenges that should be mediated by the government and health policymakers in order to safeguard the quality of care and avoid higher mortality rates.

Keywords: Corona virus; COVID-19; Beirut blast; frontline nurses; psychology; qualitative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00207640211004989 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:68:y:2022:i:4:p:754-761

DOI: 10.1177/00207640211004989

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().