Holistic support for the well-being of nurses during health crisis in the Philippines

Dear Editor,

I thank Chen et al. in their article titled ‘It’s time to protect nursing students from workplace violence’ for considering my article as basis for their reaction and supporting my claim with regard to the essentiality of social support for health professionals (HPs) who had experienced workplace violence (WPV). In their paper, they stressed that there is an urgent need to protect nursing students against WPV because it does not only affect their safety but also their professional confidence [1]. I firmly support this claim since many studies were already undertaken to validate the overall impact of WPV against HPs and nursing students as well. In this paper, I aim to present the situation of nurses in the Philippines and propose a holistic approach as an intervention to boost their professional confidence (PC).

Filipino nurses are considered ‘unsung heroes’ for the reason that they do not receive the appropriate treatment for their acts of heroism, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many experienced moderate to high acute and chronic occupational fatigue levels, lower intershift recovery levels, and good fair sleep quality [2]. Given the chronic understaffing, low wages, unsafe working conditions, and deployment bans, Filipino nurses have expressed their exhaustion and dismay with remarks such as ‘We don’t feel cared for…’ and ‘We feel exhausted…’ [3]. It is no wonder that the mass resignations at the height of the pandemic worsened when 40% of nurses working in private hospitals resigned, and public hospitals faced the same problem [4]. With this unfortunate situation, the PC of nurses is in dire need of attention.

Professional confidence is the self-assurance felt by newly assigned, enrolled, hired, or newly promoted individuals regarding their readiness to handle the stress, competitiveness, vocabulary, workload, instructional or orientation methods, and related complexities associated with their new role. Individuals who strongly manifest professional confidence have a positive sense of efficacy in their professional role [5]. However, when different problems affect one’s PC, the overall well-being suffers. As an intervention, this is where a holistic approach is much needed because it caters to the different aspects of the human person—physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, and economic. As nurses experience so much fatigue and tiredness, hospital administrators should hire more nurses to prevent understaffing and overworking. They must see to it that, as much as possible, sufficient working hours are assigned to each nurse, and overtime work is discouraged. Again, this is possible only if more nurses are available for such shifts. This is where an attractive financial salary package comes into play. With a higher salary rate and various benefits, more nurses will not leave their families to work abroad if they can earn the same compensation locally. Another intervention is the availability of spiritual and emotional/moral formation programs in hospitals to boost nurses’ moral and religious dimensions. Being a predominantly Christian country, Filipinos always value their religiosity and consider it as a source of energy. It can be done through organizing regular sacramental celebrations such as Holy Mass, confessions, recollections, and counseling sessions. With this holistic support, nurses will never doubt of quitting their jobs but be encouraged more to serve the country with utmost dedication.

Conflict of interest

None declared.

References

Author notes