Nurses' attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines: A qualitative study (PROACTIVE-study).

AIM: To explore the attitudes of healthcare workers towards COVID-19 vaccines. DESIGN: A qualitative descriptive design was used. METHODS: Five focus groups were conducted between October and November 2021, with a total of 30 nurses from different contexts in Northern Italy. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the transcripts. RESULTS: Three main themes were identified: 'favourable', 'unsure' and 'contrary to' COVID-19 vaccines. The favourable position was underpinned by trust in science, research and vaccination; protection for themselves, their families, patients and the population; duty as professionals; necessity to set an example for others. Participants who were unsure had doubts about the composition, safety and efficacy of the vaccine and were sometimes afraid that media provided incomplete information. The main reason why nurses were against was the feeling that being forced to vaccinate perceived as blackmail. Favourable or unsure nurses struggled to deal with those who were against and developed a series of emotions that ranged from respect and attempt to rationalize, to frustration and defeat. CONCLUSIONS: Identifying the areas of hesitation is essential to understand what affects the choices of acceptance, delay or refusal of vaccination. The issues that emerged regarding proper communication within the vaccination campaign highlights the key importance of adequate vaccination strategies. IMPLICATION FOR THE PROFESSION AND/OR PATIENT CARE: Understanding attitudes towards vaccine and related motivations among healthcare workers could help develop more specific and targeted vaccination campaigns that can ensure proper vaccination coverage rates and avoid hesitancy or refusal. IMPACT: Healthcare workers experiences of COVID-19 vaccines, their views and know how they feel during COVID-19 vaccinations. Healthcare workers had three different positions in COVID-19 vaccination. This research will guide and target future vaccination campaigns. REPORTING METHOD: The study is reported using the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR). PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: No Patient or Public Contribution.

Predictors of events of violence or aggression against nurses in the workplace: A scoping review.

AIM: To identify predictors and consequences of violence or aggression events against nurses and nursing students in different work contexts. BACKGROUND: Workplace violence against nurses and nursing students is a very common and widespread phenomenon. Actions to manage or prevent violent events could be implemented knowing the risk factors and consequences. However, there is a lack of systematic reviews that summarize knowledge on the predictors and consequences of workplace violence. EVALUATION: A scoping review was conducted using electronic databases including APA PsycInfo, CINAHL, Cochrane, Ovid Medline, PubMed and Scopus. KEY ISSUES: After full text analysis, 87 papers were included in the current scoping review. Risk factors of horizontal violence were grouped into 'personal' and 'Environmental and organizational', and for violence perpetrated by patients into 'personal', 'Environmental and organizational' and 'Characteristics of the perpetrators'. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this scoping review uncover problems that often remain unaddressed, especially where these episodes are very frequent. Workplace violence prevention and management programmes are essential to counter it. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: The predictors and the consequents identified constitute the body of knowledge necessary for nurse managers to develop and implement policy and system actions to effectively manage or prevent violent events.

Italian nurses' COVID-19 experiences from mass media interviews: a qualitative study.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic is heavily hitting healthcare systems around the world, and nurses are battling in the front line. Previous studies have reported nurses' responses to catastrophic situations, but also interviews released by Italian nurses to the main mass media channels could bear important messages for policy makers and stakeholders. This study describes Italian front-line nurses' experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic through television interviews. Methods: This is a descriptive qualitative study. Data were collected through purposive sampling from Italian front-line nurses' interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic. Publicly available interviews between 7th and 29th March 2020 were collected from the websites of national and regional television stations. Thematic content analysis was used to describe, summarize, and classify data into macro themes. The study is compliant with Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research. Results: A total of 21 television interviews were collected from front-line clinical nurses, nursing managers, nursing trade union representatives and representatives of the Nursing Regulator. Thematic analysis yielded four macro-themes: psycho-social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on health professionals; altered patient relationships; personal safety; recognition and promotion of the profession. Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated some problems already present, such as the shortage of nurses, but has also turned the spotlight on the nursing profession. Highly involved and affected by the pandemic, nurses have become better known by the public and often also protagonists of public discussions. It is important that nurses' value as allies of the public emerges stronger from this dramatic situation.