Aims: To explore the influence of experiences of involvement in the COVID-19 rescue task on professional identity among Chinese nurses from a qualitative method perspective.
Background: Professional identity of nurses is not static and easily affected by many factors. The COVID-19 epidemic brings the tremendous physical and psychological challenges for rescue nurses. At present, there are limited data on the influence of rescue experiences on the nurses' professional identity.
Methods: This study used a face-to-face interview with semi-structured questions to learn about the influence of rescue experiences on the professional identity of nurses. Purposeful sampling was used to collect participants (n = 14), and interview data were analysed following the Colaizzi's phenomenological analysis.
Results: The 'impression of exhaustion and fear', 'feeling the unfairness', 'perceiving incompetence in rescue task' and 'unexpected professional benefits' were the main factors affecting the professional identity of rescue nurses.
Conclusion: The present study showed that special attention and targeted support measures should be provided to improve the professional identity of rescue nurses.
Implications for nursing management: Nurse managers should make a post-epidemic recovery plan to help nurses to improve the professional identity. Designed education programmes and complete disaster response system should be developed to deal with infection disease in the future.
Keywords: COVID-19; nurse; professional identity; qualitative study; rescue experience.
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.