Nursing's Response to COVID-19: Lessons Learned from SARS in Taiwan

Nurses are always on the front lines of health care crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic. To recognize the vital service of nurses to health care, the World Health Organization designated 2020 as the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, and in this year, worldwide, nurses are facing enormous challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic. Nurses are confronting not only the overwhelming number of illnesses that stress nursing care capacity but are facing infectious risk to themselves. The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003 taught nurses in Taiwan approaches useful in viral outbreaks for protecting public health through nursing leadership, policy making, coordination between government and hospitals, the provision of skilled care and trusted resources, and the establishment of the nurse-led quarantine care call center. As of March 20th, Taiwan had recorded 135 cases of COVID-19, a relatively low number given the island's proximity to China and compared to the more than 80,000 in China and the tens of thousands in Europe. When the COVID-19 virus originated and became epidemic in Wuhan, China in 2019, Taiwan, because of its close geographic proximity to China, was expected to have the second highest number of cases (Gardner, 2020). However, Taiwan was successful in preventing this occurrence by deploying a combination of big data, transparency, and central command (Wang et al., 2020). These measures, while strict, were combined with a high degree of sensitive and professional nursing care provided by front line nurses. Immediately after COVID-19 occurred in Wuhan, China before the Lunar New Year, nursing leaders of government, national nursing organizations, and hospitals, together with the Taiwanese government, quickly mobilized resources to protect nurses on the frontlines, to implement approaches to provide skilled nursing care in infection control units and negative-pressure wards, and to protect public health, The experiences and actions taken by nurses in Taiwan can provide valuable information for other countries in their response to COVID-19.