Experiences of moral distress in a COVID-19 intensive care unit: A qualitative study of nurses and respiratory therapists in the United States.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed extraordinary stress on frontline healthcare providers as they encounter significant challenges and risks while caring for patients at the bedside. This study used qualitative research methods to explore nurses and respiratory therapists' experiences providing direct care to COVID-19 patients during the first surge of the pandemic at a large academic medical center in the Northeastern United States. The purpose of this study was to explore their experiences as related to changes in staffing models and to consider needs for additional support.

Encountering the social determinants of health on a COVID-19 ICU: Frontline providers' perspectives on inequality in a time of pandemic.

Efforts to improve health equity may be advanced by understanding health care providers' perceptions of the causes of health inequalities. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with nurses and registered respiratory therapists (RRTs) who served on intensive care units (ICUs) during the first surge of the pandemic, this paper examines how frontline providers perceive and attribute the unequal impacts of COVID-19. It shows that nurses and RRTs quickly perceived the pandemic's disproportionate burden on Black and Latinx individuals and families.

Intensive care unit nurses living through COVID-19: A qualitative study.

Aims: To understand how nurses experience providing care for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in intensive care units.

Background: As hospitals adjust staffing patterns to meet the demands of the pandemic, nurses have direct physical contact with ill patients, placing themselves and their families at physical and emotional risk.

Methods: From June to August 2020, semi-structured interviews were conducted.

Can I trust them to do everything? The role of distrust in ethics committee consultations for conflict over life-sustaining treatment among Afro-Caribbean patients.

Background: Distrust in the American healthcare system is common among Afro-Caribbeans but the role of this distrust in conflict over life-sustaining treatment is not well described.

Objective: To identify the ways that distrust manifests in ethics committee consultation for conflict over life-sustaining treatment among Afro-Caribbean patients.

Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study at a large academic hospital of all ethics committee consultations for life-sustaining treatment among Afro-Caribbean patients and their surrogates.