Abstract
BACKGROUND: The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to be a challenging time for the nursing profession globally. Research indicates that the care of patients with COVID-19 has caused significant psychological stress for nurses. Although much of the world's attention has been on nurses working in emergency departments and intensive care units, the pandemic also posed significant challenges for nurses providing home care services in rural communities. PURPOSE: The purpose of this work was to describe the experiences of rural Canadian home care nurses during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: The data for this analysis was derived from a study that explored the continuing education needs of rural home care nurses. Since the data collection for the primary objective occurred in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 related themes were created using interpretive description methodology. Snowball and purposive sampling were used to recruit rural home care registered nurses who were employed in the central and southern areas of a western Canadian province. RESULTS: Six themes were constructed from the data including: Nurses Must Work, Constant State of Flux, Threatened Safety, Loss of Learning Opportunities, Fearing the Unknown, and Hindsight is Easy. CONCLUSION: The experiences of rural home care nurses during COVID-19 reflects the chaos, uncertainty, and fear that was felt globally. Based on the findings of this study, recommendations for future pandemic planning are suggested.