The lived experiences of frontline nurses during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic in Qatar: A qualitative study

<h3>Aim</h3><p dir="ltr">This study aims to explore the lived experiences of frontline nurses providing nursing care for COVID-19 patients in Qatar.</p><h3>Design</h3><p dir="ltr">Qualitative, Phenomenological.</p><h3>Methods</h3><p dir="ltr">Nurses were recruited from a designated COVID-19 facility using purposive and snowball sampling. The participants were interviewed face-to-face using semi-structured interview questions from 6 September–10 October 2020. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using Colaizzi's phenomenological method.</p><h3>Result</h3><p dir="ltr">A total of 30 nurses were interviewed; (76.7%) were deployed for >6 months. Three major themes were drawn from the analysis: (a) Challenges of working in a COVID-19 facility (subthemes: working in a new context and new working environment, worn out by the workload, the struggle of wearing protective gear, fear of COVID-19, witnessing suffering); (b) Surviving COVID-19 (subthemes: keeping it safe with extra measures, change in eating habits, teamwork and camaraderie, social support); and (c) Resilience of Nurses (subthemes: a true calling, a sense of purpose).</p><h2>Other Information</h2><p dir="ltr">Published in: Nursing Open<br>License: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</a><br>See article on publisher's website: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/nop2.901" target="_blank">http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/nop2.901</a></p>