3.7 Healthcare Workers’ Experience of End-of-Life Care during COVID-19
Healthcare workers described their specific experiences of providing end-of-life care and two key themes emerged:
Emotional Impact on Healthcare Workers Unprecedented Working Conditions
3.7.1 Emotional Impact on Healthcare Workers
Participants who were healthcare workers discussed the negative feelings they endured during the pandemic and the hardships experienced by their patients. Some recalled the difficulty of watching patients loved ones who were not permitted to enter due to visiting restrictions: “Working frontline, it often was harrowing. Watching family members outside in the rain looking in as their loved one dies inside with one member of the family only present. Relatives were often difficult to cross with us, [which worsened] the absolute misery we were feeling.”
Similarly, another healthcare worker described the sadness of watching a patient’s family witnessing their father die through a hospital window:
“As a healthcare worker, the impact of patients not being able to physically see their loved ones is one of the hardest parts of my nursing career. To see a family looking in a window, viewing their dying father was so traumatic and heart breaking. It is a moment in time I will never forget.”
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