Review
Nursing interventions that humanise care for patients affected by COVID-19 in isolation units: An integrative review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.idh.2022.03.001Get rights and content
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open access

Highlights

  • Providing nursing care for patients affected by the coronavirus is challenging.

  • Nurses bundle their care interventions avoiding multiple entries in patients' rooms.

  • There is the risk of providing care to cure the disease, neglecting humanised care.

  • To provide humanised care, nurses use instrumental and expressive interventions.

Abstract

Background

During the global pandemic, the increasing number of hospitalised patients affected by COVID-19 led to a shortage of nurses. This situation can cause nurses to focus their care on managing the acute aspects of the disease, neglecting interventions that can humanise their practices and improve quality of care. This review aims to identify nurses' interventions that can humanise care for patients affected by COVID-19 in isolation units.

Methods

Whittemore and Knafl's integrative review methodology was used to structure and conduct the review. The literature search was conducted using CINAHL, MEDLINE, Nursing & Allied Health, MedicLatina, Sciencedirect, LILACS, and PubMed databases. Researchers performed the final search in January 2021.

Results

A total of seven articles were included in this review. Interventions by nursing staff that may humanise care for patients affected by COVID-19 in isolation units fall within two themes: “expressive dimension interventions”, related to the establishment of communication with patients and their families, providing psychological comfort, shared decision-making and patient education; and “instrumental dimension interventions”, associated with providing patients physical comfort, and symptom management.

Conclusion

This review provides insight into both “expressive dimension” and “instrumental dimension” of nursing interventions that may humanise care to patients affected by COVID-19 in isolation units. This knowledge will allow nurses to improve their care practices, providing more holistic, humanised care for these patients.

Keywords

Nursing care
Patients
Hospitals
Isolation
COVID-19

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