“It’s sink or swim for us”: The lived experiences of Filipino nurses in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic
Borbolla, D. & Nkansa-Dwamena, O. 
ORCID: 0000-0003-4599-0717 (2025).
“It’s sink or swim for us”: The lived experiences of Filipino nurses in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Qualitative Research in Medicine & Healthcare, 9(1),
article number 100002.
doi: 10.1016/j.qrmh.2025.100002
Abstract
Background
The United Kingdom has recruited Filipino nurses since the late 1990s to meet the country’s healthcare needs. Currently, over 40,000 Filipinos are working in the National Health Service, and it is suggested that 36 % of all known healthcare worker (HCW) deaths from COVID-19 within the first two-month period (March and April 2020) were Filipinos, despite accounting for 8 % of the NHS nursing workforce. There was a clear disparity in social media exposure between the celebrated heroism of Filipino HCW and the coverage of disproportionate death rates within the Filipino HCW community in the UK. This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of Filipino nurses in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods
A qualitative study was conducted using interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA). Six nurses were recruited using purposive and snowball sampling, and interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using IPA.
Findings
Drawing on interview data, two themes are presented: inescapability and relentlessness of COVID-19 and “It’s sink or swim”: psychological welfare.
Interpretation
Filipino nurses experienced the COVID-19 pandemic as an all-consuming phenomenon, as they were perceived as the embodiment of threat and placed at disproportionate risk perpetuated by racial, systemic, and political factors. Despite this, they had no choice but to battle through, engaging in culturally specific ways of coping.
| Publication Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Publisher Keywords: | Filipino, Nurses, Healthcare workers, Mental health, COVID-19 impacts, Ethnic minority research, Lived experiences |
| Subjects: | R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine R Medicine > RT Nursing |
| Departments: | School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Psychology |
| SWORD Depositor: |
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
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