[Nurses' bedside emotions for COVID-19. Consensual qualitative research]

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented working conditions, with repercussions on the daily lives of nurses. The events experienced positively or negatively in their clinical practice have aroused a variety of emotions for them. The objective of this research is to describe and categorize the events that provoked emotions in nurses who volunteered to accompany COVID-19 victims in a Belgian academic hospital during the first wave of the pandemic by identifying what these emotions were. The researchers used Hill's Consensual Qualitative Research method. Nineteen semi-structured individual interviews were conducted. After the full transcription of the recordings, the data were analyzed by the research team. The results show that the emotions felt by the participants were caused by thirty-seven types of events (categories) grouped into nine families (domains). COVID-19 is viewed negatively by the participants who express fear of this serious and contagious disease. When they talk about the experiences of patients and their families, their discourse alternates between joy at having been able to provide help and care and sadness at not having been able to be effective in all circumstances. Participants share a positive experience and express joy in recalling the COVID-19 outbreak as an exceptional event that they coped with through their personal and professional experience and resources, their relationships with colleagues on the interprofessional team, and the responses of the nursing department and hospital.