“This is really like waiting for war and this is not good” – Intertwining between pandemic experiences, and the development of professional action of healthcare professionals in critical care at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany: a qualitative study

  1. Madlen Hörold
  2. Karl Philipp Drewitz
  3. Vreni Brunnthaler
  4. Julia Piel
  5. Magdalena Rohr
  6. Ilona Hrudey
  7. Claudia Hasenpusch
  8. Angela Ulrich
  9. Niklas Otto
  10. Susanne Brandstetter
  11. Christian Apfelbacher

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Abstract

Healthcare professionals (HCPs) are facing remarkable challenges in their daily work since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Being well prepared is crucial for dealing with such a pandemic. The aim of our study was to explore HCPs’ subjective perspectives on their professional action and coping strategies in critical care during the preparation and coping phase after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany.

Together with HCPs working in critical care, we collaboratively designed an interview study based on an ethnomethodological approach. We performed semi-structured qualitative interviews via telephone or video call and analysed the data based on grounded theory.

Our research interest was focused on HCPs (qualified nurses, physicians, medical students) working in critical care during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany between April and July 2020.

Our sample consisted of 39 HCPs (19 nurses, 17 physicians, three medical students, 18/39 female) from ten German federal states. All participants were involved in the acute care of COVID-19 infected patients in hospitals and had a mean professional experience of 14.8±10.1 years, 15 participants held a management position (e.g. senior physician or head nurse). We recruited participants via personal contacts and snowballing.

Initial and focused coding resulted in seven categories: Creating structural measures, handling operational changes, dealing with personal protective equipment, building up knowledge and skills, managing information, perceiving peer support and experiencing emotions.

Professional action and subjectively perceived preparedness (professional and emotional) interacted with each other. Their interrelation was not static, but rather dynamic and ambiguous according to the situation. The findings of our study can be beneficial in developing guidelines, policy interventions or personnel and work practice strategies.

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  1. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.29.21250626v2 on medRxiv
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.29.21250626: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethical considerations, data protection and privacy: We received ethical approval for our research from the institutional review boards of the University of Magdeburg (51/20) as well as the University of Regensburg (20-1771-101) before we performed the first interview.
    Consent: Each participant received and signed a declaration of consent before we made an appointment for the respective interview.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableAll interviewers (n=7) were female with a varying degree of experience in conducting qualitative research.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.29.21250626v1 on medRxiv