Experiences of intensive care nurses providing care to the victims of Kahramanmaraş earthquakes

Abstract

Background: Two earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 occurred in the Turkish province of Kahramanmaras in 2023. The earthquakes resulted in serious losses of life and property in 11 provinces, and the injured were transferred to other provinces for treatment and care. To date, no studies on the experiences of intensive care nurses providing care to earthquake victims after the Kahramanmaras earthquake sequence have been identified.Aim: The aim of the present study is to explore the experiences of intensive care nurses providing care to earthquake victims who were transferred to other provinces.Study Design: A qualitative descriptive research design with conventional content analysis was used. Snowball sampling was used in the selection of intensive care nurses. Data saturation was achieved with 20 nurses. In-depth interviews were conducted with the participants through phone between March 8 and March 15, 2023. MAXQDA 20 software was used for data analysis. The COREQ checklist was used to guide the reporting of the study.Results: Twenty nurses were recruited. Four themes emerged from the data: challenges in caregiving processes; psychological challenges; ethical situations; urgent need for training and support.Conclusions: After the Kahramanmaras earthquake sequence, described by some as the disaster of the century, nurses encountered patients with unique needs that they had never encountered before and tried to cope with the constantly changing health conditions. For this reason, they were affected psychologically and experienced challenges in caregiving processes.Relevance to Clinical Practice: Conducting comprehensive training for diseases common among earthquake victims, developing new protocols for providing care to earthquake victims, developing more action plans for nurses, and psychologically supporting intensive care nurses would facilitate the caregiving processes.