The Impact of COVID-19 on Nurses

Dedication

Mary C. Vrtis, Ph.D., MSN, MA, RN, OCN, NEA-BC, FCN

May 17. 2025

This is a book of nursing research that was initially intended to answer the question: How, when the U.S. entered the pandemic so prepared did the country lose 1.13 million people before May 13, 2023, when the public health emergency ended?

Unfortunately, many of the world’s nurses, along with other healthcare workers and first responders, lost their lives or have become disabled as a direct result of fighting a personal war against a COVID-19 infection. The statistics related to nurse deaths and disability were not consistently documented, especially at the beginning and height of the pandemic.

We are 29 million nurses strong living in one world (WHO, 2024 May 3). In 2020, approximately 59% of all healthcare workers were nurses (WHO, 2020). For more than three years we have fought a worldwide war against the invisible SARS-CoV-2 virus to save the lives of others. The virus mutated numerous times to prevent human attempts to eliminate it. The incredible amounts of energy that nurses put into their work in all of the various practice settings saved countless lives. COVID-19 is not over, an additional 60,294 people have died in the U.S. from May 13, 2023, to May 18, 2024 (CDC, 2024 May 28), but for the moment the virus and the humans are in balance with less lethal Omicron variants circulating.

Healthcare workers did not consistently have what they needed to protect themselves, and a very large number of front-line workers were infected with COVID-19, especially pre-vaccine in 2020. This book is dedicated to all of the unsung heroes who ran toward patients in need, often without adequate, fit-tested respiratory protective equipment and other personal protective equipment. Their sacrifices will not be forgotten!

The COVID-19 pandemic has left massive loss of life, and an enormous number of permanently disabled people in its wake. There are countless micro-organisms in our environment that can cause great harm to the human population, and potentially lethal viruses, bacteria and fungi are far faster at adapting to hostile environments by mutating than we humans are. Pandemics are an inevitable consequence of an overpopulated planet – there will be more. It is a question of when, not if – and we need to be prepared.

In September 2021 publication, the World Health Organization estimated: “At the most conservative level, a population-based estimate indicates that around 115,500 healthcare workers (ranging between 80,000-160,000) out of the global health and care workforce of 135 million people could have lost their lives. The upper range of estimation could exceed 180,00 if the estimated overall deaths among the high-burden countries are taken into consideration. This is an alarming picture of the impact of the pandemic on healthcare workers who need to be provided with better protection (including access to vaccines, personal protective equipment, training, testing, and psychosocial support) and decent work conditions (including adequate renumeration and protection against excessive workloads).

We have also demonstrated that the number of deaths among health care workers due to COVID-19 is much greater than initially reported. To date, few countries are able to provide complete counts of healthcare workers deaths related to COVID-19. Countries are urged to undertake retrospective audits of deaths through verbal autopsy methods to trace and record COVID-19 related deaths of healthcare workers.”

WHO (2021, September). The Impact of COVID-19 on Health and Care Workers: A Closer Look at Deaths. https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/345300/WHO-HWF-WorkingPaper-2021.1-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

This book is dedicated to the memory of colleagues lost to nursing through death or disability, those who can no longer speak for themselves. We hope that the information in this book will encourage nurses to use their collective voices and to take the lead in infection control and prevention efforts. Nurses are the front-line staff members most likely to have face-to-face contact with infected patients. We absolutely must assure that the equipment and support structures needed to keep healthcare providers safe are fully integrated into the pandemic plan in our workplaces and that protective equipment will be ready at a moment’s notice.

We can never allow the failures discussed in this book to happen again!

References cited:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (downloaded 2024, May 28). https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_totaldeaths_select_00

World Health Organization (2020). State of the World’s Nursing 2020. https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/331677/9789240003279-eng.pdf?sequence=1

World Health Organization (2021, September). The Impact of COVID-19 on Health and Care Workers: A Closer Look at Deaths. https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/345300/WHO-HWF-WorkingPaper-2021.1-eng.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

World Health Organization (2024, May 3). Nursing and Midwifery. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/nursing-and-midwifery