Table 2.

Supportive vs. unsupportive aspects of organizational culture.

Category	Supportive	Unsupportive
Communication Definition: How communication about pandemic response was handled.	There is a lot more communication between managers and the nursing staff about how to address the COVID patients and how to protect ourselves. There are emails being sent out everyday to all hospital staff about updates of the hospital and what everyone should be doing and what to expect. (Urban medical-surgical nurse)	The epidemiologists are having to work with us and that has been a really eye opening experience for them. In my opinion, they undervalue us and what we are capable of. Their communication with us has been downright awful. Things have been so confusing that in a recent meeting, one of the nurses actually started yelling at the epidemiologist. Every minute there is a new process or a new way to input data and there has been little high quality training. The epis get frustrated when we don't do things right, but they don't explain what they want clearly. I don't think that they realize that if they just wrote out what they wanted us to do or had a brief five minute video that things would be done more correctly. There is this hesitation to delegate larger tasks which increases the burden on them. It's like they don't know how to use their nurses. Granted, we have enough going on, but still, if more needed to be done, we could make it happen. (Urban medical-surgical nurse)
In-Person Contact Quality with Hospital Administration Definition: The quality of interpersonal interactions experienced by nurses with administrators or managers	Frequent meetings and “huddles” regarding surge plans, disaster preparedness, changing of current guidelines, etc. (Suburban intensive care unit nurse)	There is a more sound feeling of an “us vs. them” front line workers being the “us” and upper management or corporate being “them”. (Suburban medical-surgical nurse)
Frontline Manager Definition: How the nurse's direct supervisor was perceived to handle pandemic response.	My manager was amazing and was at one point taking teams on night shift to help out in as well as two assistant nurse managers from other medical surgical floors who divided shifts and spent most of the time making sure we had PPE stocked, keeping us abreast of the changing protocols, and making sure we had enough staff to function (always a challenge). (Teaching hospital pediatric nurse)	Our manager formed a Covid prep team on our unit that was or organize equipment and supplies. They were supposed to run Covid drills and until under scrutiny these drills only started recently. The Covid prep team also quickly dismantled because they were micromanaged and poorly lead. (Teaching hospital medical-surgical nurse)
Culture of Response Definition: How nurses' perceived the culture of pandemic response by their organization.	Overall the response in my institution was a concerted effort to be patient and helpful with *everyone*, whether other disciplines or RNs redeploying from other areas. (Rural hospital nurse)	It upsets me that [the main hospital] and [the specialty hospital] (can't speak for the others) were swimming with resources and didn't share with sister [system] sites. (Urban teaching hospital nurse)
Staff Treatment Definition: How nurses reported they felt they were treated by their employer	The support of admin and community really helped. Cheers, cards, meals etc. was so appreciated. Staff who cared directly for covid should receive hazard pay. (Urban medical-surgical nurse)	Not being recognized or treated as an essential human that holds up a place/company but rather just expendable asset/tool is beyond infuriating. (Suburban intensive care unit nurse)