Bearing witness to a pandemic BUPA | SANITAS
I live near the clinic and walk to work through a park. At the start, there weren’t many people around, but then people started coming out again. It worried me to see people not distancing as they should, or little ones running around without masks. I would ask myself: What do we have to do to make people take this seriously? This has to stop soon. Soon we will be able to get together again, to celebrate all the missed birthdays and share again, but we can’t stop yet. All of this reminds me of when I was a student in university. I remember clearly that a professor of epidemiology told us about pandemics and the importance of the role of nurses as organisers and team leaders. He also talked about Florence Nightingale, who was in the Crimean War in the mid xix century and brought in organisation of areas, dirty here and clean there. She insisted on the importance of something as basic as washing your hands. She said: “Humanity is going to be 100 years late in giving value to nursing.”*
ANTOFAGASTA — CHILE
illnesses, he wasn’t a smoker and his quality of life was good. That made us think that “nobody escapes from this”, or I am really thankful perhaps he just came to the hospital a bit late. So, when that patient was discharged, we had a real party, with applause, to the whole team. crying and all. It was very emotional, a precious moment, because he was the first critical patient who recovered. A newspaper photographer even came. It was a victory. Many patients who have recovered send us thank you messages, which is lovely. With everything we are going through, I couldn’t lower the intensity at work, and had to be at the hospital every day. Even at weekends. My husband is a doctor and we have a son of 4 years old, Andrés Emilio. The apple of my eye. While I was at the hospital, my son and my husband stayed at home, as my husband was able to have flexibility with his hours. Our nanny was also very supportive. She is like family to us. We had to be really careful at home because we knew that my husband or I could get sick at any moment and pass it to the other. I was ultra careful with everything, because I knew that whenever I came back from the hospital I could well be carrying the virus. I was careful and methodical when coming in, when staying and when going out, with lots of procedures in place.
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