Mitchell Knisely, assistant professor, contributed to "Pain Management Nurses’ Roles During the COVID-19 Pandemic" in "Pain Management Nursing." 

Background
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), commonly known as Covid-19, has infected more than 207 million people and resulted in approximately 4.3 million deaths around the world (Johns Hopkins University & Medicine, 2021). This contagious respiratory infection has caused an international pandemic that has significantly impacted frontline providers and health systems. Nurses, the largest contingent of providers, have been indispensable in Covid-19 prevention and response efforts.

The Covid-19 pandemic required health systems to adapt to the increasing number of people requiring hospitalizations by reallocating resources to prevent further spread of the infection and to meet the needs of patients. Consequently, nurses had to adapt, and some were reassigned new roles within facilities to meet the additional needs (Pontieri-Lewis, 2020; Purba, 2020; Ulrich et al., 2020; Wierenga et al., 2020; Yaffee et al., 2020). Nurses have been featured prominently in the lay press and mounting empirical evidence about their experiences has been published and is beginning to be synthesized since the onset of the pandemic (Fernandez et al., 2020). However, the effects of the pandemic on pain management nurses (PMNs) have been absent from the literature. While PMNs’ scope and standards of practice have been articulated (American Nurses Association [ANA] and the American Society for Pain Management Nursing [ASPMN], 2016), the impact of the pandemic on them remains unknown. Understanding nurses’ normal roles and changes to them because of the pandemic is important for informing these specialty providers and the public, aiding in preparing for future health crises, and providing a historical record of their work during this pandemic. Therefore, this study was conducted to explore role changes of PMNs performing patient care during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Citation

Timothy Joseph Sowicz Ph.D., RN, NP-C , Mitchell R. Knisely Ph.D., RN, ACNS-BC, PMGT-BC , Staja Q. Booker Ph.D., RN , Jinbing Bai Ph.D., MSN, RN, FAAN , Anitha Saravanan Ph.D., RN, ANP-BC , Barbara St. Marie Ph.D., AGPCNP, FAANP, FAAN , Pain Management Nurses’ Roles During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Pain Management Nursing (2021), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmn.2021.09.006