Özet:

Objective: Intensive care nurses faced many psychological problems during the COVID-19 disease process, which emerged as a global health threat. The aim of this descriptive and cross-sectional study was to determine the stress level in intensive care nurses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: The study was conducted online with 88 nurses actively working in intensive care. Data were collected with a personal information form consisting of 21 questions and the COVID-19 Stress Scale. SPSS version 25.0 programme was used for data analysis. In statistical evaluation, Independent Samples t test, one-way ANOVA test, Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis analysis were used to determine the differences between independent variables and scale mean scores. The significance level was accepted as 0.05. Conclusion: The median age of the nurses was 34.50±8.16 (min:24, max:58). of the intensive care nurses who participated in the study, 70.5% had experienced COVID-19 on average 1.30±0.56 (min:1, max:4) times. 85.2% of the participants stated that the COVID-19 pandemic had a positive impact on the nursing profession and 90.9% stated that it had a positive impact on their professional development. As the number of children increased, the mean scores of the sub-dimensions of danger and contamination, socio-economic consequences and xenophobia increased. A significant correlation was found between income level and the mean scores of the Danger and Contamination, Socioeconomic Consequences and Traumatic Stress subscales (p<0.05). It was found that there was a significant difference between the duration of working in the COVID-19-related service and the level of traumatic stress (p<0.05). When analysing the scores of the sub-dimensions of the scale, it was found that the sub-dimension with the highest mean was the sub-dimension of danger and contagiousness (29.17±11.86). Conclusion: : It was concluded that the level of traumatic stress increased with the increase in working hours of the nurses in the COVID-19 service and the nurses experienced the most stress with the risk of danger and contagiousness. In line with these findings, in order to prevent nurses from having prolonged contact with patients with infectious diseases during pandemic periods, it is recommended that nurses working in the pandemic service should work in other services during the process and that rest periods should be planned. It is also recommended to develop training and procedures to take measures to minimise the risk of contagiousness.