Working on the front line as a new nurse at the onset of COVID-19 left a lasting impact on Rosemarie Moretti (BScN \u201919).<\/p>\n
Now, the Registered Nurse (RN) and Brock University Applied Health Sciences master\u2019s student is analyzing the experiences of other novice nurses who entered the workforce during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
While Moretti was taught how to respond in critical care and crisis settings and learned about epidemics as a Brock Nursing student, nothing could have prepared her for the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing bedside in hospital at the start of the pandemic and being a new nurse, I was surrounded by many senior nurses who initially compared COVID-19 to the SARS outbreak of 2003,” Moretti says. “During the first couple of waves, I felt like there were only a handful of us who hadn\u2019t experienced anything like this before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Needing a change from working on a \u2018COVID floor\u2019 when entire hospitals were locked down, Moretti took on a new role at Niagara Region Public Health\u2019s vaccination clinics. There, she met hundreds of nurses and discovered that many of them had graduated in or after 2019.<\/p>\n
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/IMG_8783-Moretti-and-O\u2019Keefe-McCarthy-edited-1050x700.jpg\")
Rosemarie Moretti consults with her supervisor, Associate Professor of Nursing Sheila O\u2019Keefe-McCarthy, on recruitment strategies to use for her master\u2019s thesis study.<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cIt was only when I changed jobs that I started to realize just how many of us from similar cohorts shared common experiences that warranted further investigation,\u201d Moretti says.<\/p>\n
While listening to her new colleagues\u2019 stories, she realized many of them had also come from hospitals or acute care settings. Moretti noticed similar narratives were being shared by Ontario-based nurse advocates in the news and on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I looked into it, there wasn\u2019t a lot of information that discussed the more novice nurses,\u201d Moretti says. \u201cI found a gap in the literature and realized our voices were missing from larger discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Moretti was originally pursuing another topic of study for her master’s thesis, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented her from moving forward with data collection. Building on her experience and passion for nursing advocacy, she reset her goals and re-started the entire research process.<\/p>\n
\u201cCOVID-19 was a barrier to several students\u2019 academic journey,\u201d says Associate Professor of Nursing Sheila O\u2019Keefe-McCarthy. \u201cRosemarie found a way to use her own pandemic experiences to propel her forward and in doing so, has met with novice nurses like herself and created a safe space for them to share their own journeys as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her new study, Moretti looks at the lived experiences of novice nurses who graduated in 2019 or later and worked in Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants must hold an active licence in Ontario from the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) but can be actively working outside of the province.<\/p>\n
Moretti hopes her research will provide a platform to give novice nurses an important voice about their lived experiences and influence future training initiatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an undergraduate nursing student, we were taught about adversity and how caring is an art form,\u201d Moretti says. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s really been keeping me going throughout this journey. I wouldn\u2019t give up on a patient and so I\u2019m not going to give up on this either.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more information about the study, please email rm15fo@brocku.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Working on the front line as a new nurse at the onset of COVID-19 left a lasting impact on Rosemarie Moretti (BScN \u201919).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":85494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119,36,7484,3319,188,55,1,5],"tags":[28,8791,5505,12660,3335,3330,12661,34,3325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85492"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85492"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85511,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85492\/revisions\/85511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}