Let stress go out: An essential approach?

Dear Sir,

During this pandemic, everyone’s level of health, especially mental health, has been affected, but for frontline health care workers, such as nurses working with COVID-19 pandemic, it is similar to a world war that they are fighting as they experience a lot of pain and suffering on a daily basis, truly mentioned in this attractive study titled “Anxiety, depression and quality of life related to COVID-19 among frontline health care professionals”: a multicentric cross-sectional survey. I completely agree with the results published in this study that indicate around 18.1% of nurses were at borderline for their experience of anxiety and depression but the more tragic point to note was that there were nurses who had severe anxiety (12.1%) and depression (14.7%), which require further assessment and treatment.[1]

The findings of the study have caught my interest. Through your esteemed journal, I would like to highlight the point that while assessing the anxiety, stress, and depression levels among the nurses, some intervention can be given to them to reduce their anxiety level and then its effect would have been measured. Being a critical care nurse, in an institute of national importance, I would like to highlight some coping strategies for the frontline health professionals and the general public for better health in all aspects. Nurses feel the ethical strain of watching patients die acutely.[2] Due to the lack of resources, such as ventilators, oxygen beds, costly medications and they experience anxiety from the risk of infecting patients’ as symptomatic carriers.

There are still gaps in the process of identifying the anxiety and stress and appropriate intervention to prevent them. Some literature suggests, that a way for nurses to escape from the reality of death and dying caused by being overly engaged with the information, avoidance strategies, such as avoiding unnecessary interactions and ignoring the updates about the pandemic have been used by them.[34] However, there are other various strategies[5] that can be used to minimize the stress caused by this pandemic—including deep breathing exercises, stretching and outdoor walking, supporting each other in the workplace—that provides strength among all. Limiting the conversations of the crisis and talking about various other things of interest that spread positive vibes, limiting the use of virtual networks, regular contact with the loved ones and showing love to each other, trying to avoid thinking about the things that are not under our control, and focusing on the things that can be controlled and manipulated have been noted to be healthy practices for them. There is a usual saying in flights, help yourself first then only you can save others, so to maintain the saying, our health and nutrition should be taken care of properly first with proper sleeping hours and a comfortable bed, including things that can induce a proper sleep, such as sleeping with dimmed lights, with soothing songs that may help in inducing a night of good sleep. If they feel that they are experiencing a lot of anxiety, which is beyond their control, consulting a psychiatrist and, most importantly, increase the spirit of hope in oneself and the people around is a must.

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Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.