TAMPA, Fla. -- A new webinar series from the University of South Florida's College of Nursing aims to give nurses of any experience the tools they need to advocate for their safety and wellbeing during the pandemic.

"The first few months of the pandemic were really difficult. It was very scary," said Kerie Seelenbrandt, an emergency room nurse at Kent Hospital in Warwick, RI. "We didn't have a lot of knowledge of the virus and how to fully treat it and how it spreads so quickly."


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"Pre-pandemic, we know that the nursing workforce was extremely demanding," said Dr. Rayna Letourneau, an assistant professor at the College of Nursing. "Nurses have higher levels of stress, higher anxiety, they get less sleep on average, and all of that has increased because of the pandemic.

Letourneau said self-care is just one of the topics covered in a new webinar series from the school. Frontline Nursing During COVID-19: A New Paradigm is designed specifrically to better prepare nurses to advocate for their safety and wellbeing.

"I think a lot of us forget to do that - we're so busy taking care of everybody else," said Seelenbrandt.

Seelenbrandt was among the first to complete the course. Based in Rhode Island, she's also an example of its reach. Letourneau said USF has even been approached by other universities about putting their students through the program.

"We're realizing that there's a need for pre-licensure students to have this information, too, because we're graduating them into a pandemic, which has never been done before," said Letourneau. 

Seelenbrandt said she knows from experience the difference knowledge can make.

"I feel, a year later, we're finally at a point where we can fight this and we're not as scared as we were before," she said.