Commentary: The effect of stress levels of nurses on performance during the COVID-19 pandemic: the mediating role of motivation.

Abstract

As a researcher who has spent the last year focusing solely on nurse wellbeing in the UK during the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study immediately triggered my interest. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020. Although the trajectory of the disease has varied in different countries, most have experienced high numbers of cases and mortality. In the UK, the large numbers of cases (currently over 18 million cases and 160,000 deaths linked to the disease (ONS, 2021)) posed a major challenge to healthcare staff working in hospitals, community services, care homes and other social care organisationswho cared for individualswithCOVID-19 symptoms.New stressors for healthcare staff included fears of contracting a highly infectious disease, concerns about staff shortages, insufficient personal protective equipment (PPE), navigating unfamiliar clinical settings or systems of care due to redeployment, and lack of organisational support (Greenberg et al., 2021). In theUK, these have placed both unexpected and unprecedented extra pressures on the healthcare workforce and on services already under intense strain (The British Academy, 2021). Therefore, it is appropriate to consider whether nurses’ higher levels of stress during the COVID-19 pandemic decrease their motivations and performance both in the UK and internationally. This study sheds light on perceived stress levels of nurses based in one hospital in Turkey. The authors wished to examine the effect of perceived stress experienced by nurses on theirmotivation and performance. The authors used four scales (a perceived stress scale, a perceived work stress scale, a motivation at work scale and a performance scale) which all comprised a 5-point Likert scale design. Surprisingly, from the one hundred and fourteen nurses who completed the questionnaires, this study found that the participants’ perceived stress and job stress levels were at a medium level. The participants’ perceived motivation levels were also at a medium level, whilst their perceived performance levels were at a high level. This data is perhaps surprising and contrasts significantly with the longitudinal, qualitative, interview-based work I am involved in, which is ongoing and has now involved over 50 participants from a wide range of nursing settings (Conolly and Maben, 2021). The impact of COVID-19 on nurses (ICON) study based in the UK has found nurses’stress levels have been significantly raised during theCOVID-19 outbreak and continue to be so asmeasured byDepression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) scores which were taken from participants’ responses in the ICON survey fromwhich the qualitative sample was drawn (Couper et al., 2021). Our data suggest the nurses’ increased stress has affected their motivation and their commitment to the profession,