EXPLORING THE GRIEF EXPERIENCES OF REGISTERED NURSES DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC FOLLOWING PATIENT DEATH USING FEMINIST POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Abstract

Registered nurses faced an unprecedented time while working during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this research was to explore the grief experience that registered nurses had during the COVID-19 pandemic following patient death. Eight participants were recruited using a purposive sampling strategy. Semi-structured interviews were used to understand this lived experience. Feminist poststructuralism and feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis was used to understand how nurses described and understood their lived experiences in a multitude of ways, influenced by social and institutional discourses. This research identified key themes in which registered nurses understand their own grief experience when patient death occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study provides evidence on how traditional grief models do not fully account for nurses’ social and political dimensions of their emotional experience.