The experiences and challenges of nurses who become patients in a hospital setting: A scoping review of the literature

Abstract

Aim: This scoping review aimed to identify and describe evidence regarding the experiences of nurses when they become patients or when nurses care for other health professional-patients in a hospital setting. Design: A scoping review of internationally published peer-reviewed literature. Data Sources: A systematic search of peer-reviewed evidence was conducted in electronic databases: CINAHL, Medline, Scopus, ProQuest and PsycINFO. Methods: Critical appraisal, data extraction and summary were performed independently by two reviewers according to the scoping review framework developed by Arksey and O'Malley. Twenty-three publications from 1999 to 2021 were included in this scoping review. Results: This scoping review highlighted seven key themes as follows: (1) the challenges for nurse-patients and caregivers; (2) role ambiguity when a nurse becomes a patient; (3) the need for personalized care to consider the nurse's professional experience; (4) the requirement to not make assumptions about the registered nurse's knowledge; (5) loss of control and vulnerabilities of being a patient; (6) the impact of the valuable small things that carers did and (7) the impact of being a nurse-patient on their future practice. Conclusion: While some aspects of nurse-patients’ experiences are common to non-healthcare professional-patients, this review highlights there are unique challenges when nurses become patients themselves. Future research should focus on exploring nurses' experience of caring for other healthcare professional-patients and strive to better understand how to meet nurses' unique needs when they become patients themselves. Impact: This review advances knowledge on an under-explored topic, highlighting the unique and challenging experience when nurses become patients in a hospital setting. Nurses should be aware of the unique needs of nurse-patients to provide person-centred quality care. Patient or Public Contribution: There was no direct patient or public contribution to this scoping review, although one of the authors did have experience as a nurse-patient in the last 3 years.