Emotional State and Resilience of Nurses Working in the COVID-19 Clinical Areas

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had a great impact on the mental health status of the general population and also showed high levels of psychological symptoms in health professionals. Nurses were also subject to changes in their emotional state related to depression, anxiety and stress as they worked closely with these patients. This research study was aimed to understand the emotional state related to depression, anxiety and stress of nurses working in the COVID-19 clinical areas and their resilience. A descriptive cross-sectional research design was used for this study and data were collected from 400 nurses caring for COVID-19 patients using consecutive sampling technique. Self-administered questionnaires were used which included demographic proforma, Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS21) for assessing the depression, anxiety and stress and Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) to measure the resilience of nurses. The study findings revealed that there was a weak negative correlation seen between resilience with depression (r = -0.177, p = 0.000), anxiety (r = -0.177, p = 0.019) and stress (r = -0.122, p = 0.014). There was significant association between depression with area of work (p = 0.049) and years of experience (p = 0.029). The results also revealed that there was significant association between anxiety with years of experience (p = 0.048) and the educational status (p = 0.015). It was found that there was significant association between stress and gender (p = 0.003). There was significant difference of resilience seen among nurses for different durations of work (p = 0.031) and areas of work (p = 0.014). Understanding the emotional state and resilience of nurses enable the management to develop necessary interventions to improve their emotional well-being. Keywords: depression, anxiety, stress, resilience, nurses, COVID-19