The experiences of healthcare professionals in providing care to unvaccinated Covid-19 critically ill patients: a qualitative study

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it unprecedented challenges in healthcare. Since the beginning of the current pandemic, moral distress, compassion fatigue and burnout have been on the rise. Moral distress is a phenomenon that had been described prior to the pandemic as a conflict between actions healthcare practitioners believe they are ethically and morally bound to perform and barriers that stand in the way of these duties. This is important to recognize and address due to the perpetuation of burnout and compassion fatigue in healthcare workers, which is associated with negative patient outcomes, poorer quality of care, and system-wide strain secondary to workforce attrition. The recent development of vaccines against Sars-CoV-2 has simultaneously introduced a sense of hope for an end to the global pandemic and a rise in resistance towards vaccination that has placed additional pressure on frontline healthcare workers. There is a paucity of literature that examines how resistance to disease prevention impacts healthcare practitioners providing care to patients admitted with preventable illness. The investigators' study aims to explore the experiences of healthcare providers caring for unvaccinated patients admitted with moderate to severe COVID-19 infections in the intensive care setting. The investigators' objective is to examine health care professionals' perceptions on their moral and professional experience of caring for unvaccinated critically ill patients with COVID-19.