Biological risk of the nursing professional in front of the COVID-19 pandemic: integrative review

Abstract

COVID-19 is an infectious and contagious disease that causes great concern to health professionals who work in direct patient care, as it increases the risk of exposure to occupational infection in the workplace. To know the situations of exposure, vulnerabilities and factors that contribute to the contamination of nursing professionals to biological risk during the pandemic of the new coronavirus. This is an integrative literature review, whose search for articles was concentrated in the SciELO, LILACS, PubMed and Google Scholar databases. After applying the established criteria, eight articles were selected. It appears that, regardless of the place of performance, nursing professionals are the health workers most exposed to the risks of contamination by the biological agent, due to the rationalization and / or inadequacy of PPE, unavailability or inappropriate use of PPE in the work environment, in addition to the extensive workload and increased care complexity, making the tasks extensive and exhausting. The review made it possible to know and reflect on the reality of nursing workers, exposed to biological risk during the pandemic of the new coronavirus, which helped to broaden the discussion on actions that really aim at the search for adequate working conditions.