Your mother was never alone

A traumatic night shift

MADRID — SPAIN

mª eugenia fernández Healthcare Supervisor Sanitas Healthcare Funding

«I work in management and when the Covid crisis got worse I saw that they didn’t have enough staff in the hospitals and I volunteered to cover shifts where it was needed. I was at the Virgen del Mar hospital. Now I just need to rest, be with my family, read a book or just sleep. I feel such pain because I have seen terror on people’s faces, like in a war. I won’t forget them, and I have my memories in a journal, because each one had their own story and they touched my heart. I remember a woman who was widowed. She hung around days after she had been discharged. She was afraid to go home because her husband wouldn’t be there».

I take my hat off to my team

yolanda huerta Nurse Bupa Antofagasta Hospital

Our work was to calm and reassure cancer patients, who were concerned that because of the pandemic or the lockdown their treatment would be stopped.

ANTOFAGASTA — CHILE

The first thing we did was call our cancer patients, remind them of the prevention guidelines to help protect themselves from the virus, inform them of how their appointments would be dealt with, encourage them to only leave their homes when absolutely necessary. Finally, we provided them with our mobile number so they could ring us if they had any questions. It was a mammoth task.

Our patients are aged between 26 and 90 years old and they are immunocompromised and therefore very vulnerable to Covid.

If anyone was ill and had to come to the emergency unit, we would work together with the emergency manager so that the patient didn’t have to wait and could come in quickly. Our objective was to protect them from any unnecessary risk.

It is sad to see how people haven’t really taken it on board and are just walking around the streets freely. It is so different to how it has been for us here in the firing line, leaving our families, changing our way of life and working double or triple shifts.

For most of our cancer patients, the centre is like their second home. We are very close to them. They tell us: You cheer us up every day, you sort things out for us, you are always smiling. That’s why a patient’s death is not easy for us and not easy to tell the family. You suffer, because you have grown to love them too, but you have to be happy and positive. At times like that, a hug means so much, and we can’t give one.

The doctors have been very protective of us, trying to keep us from getting Covid or from infecting the patients. That’s why we would have 14-day shifts.

As coordinator of the oncology centre, I am so proud of my team. It’s been hard over these past months but they have been amazing. We have looked after each other and thank God, nobody has caught it. The team’s families have also been well. I take my hat off to them. �

When you are caring for people you don’t feel any fear

natalia sáez Nurse Sanitas Hospital La Moraleja

The operating room stopped functioning and within a week we had converted it into an intensive care unit and from then on we had intensive care nurses. The work was completely different. We had to change the way we worked and learn to move about in all that protective clothing that slowed us down. At the beginning, they said it was older people who were more affected, but then patients of my age started to come in and that made us really worried. We felt really sorry for them, because young people were coming in who had children, and they were really unwell. We were used to seeing patients for one or two hours at a time. We were spending eight hours a day with these patients. It was strange how aggressive the virus was. It would come in quietly and within a few days the person was really ill and didn’t seem to recover. They would be ill for weeks and not get better. We had never seen that before. I told my family that although I had never been in a war, I could imagine that this was a bit like nursing in a war zone. When you left your house you would get to the hospital and think: My God, I am scared to go in! But once you went in you would forget your fear. When you are looking after people you are not afraid, you are just giving your best. Then you would come out of there and start to think again about how you could pass it to those who were waiting for you at home.

Recently, in April, we started to get some control of the situation. From then, we started to see people getting better. I think it was a short time before Easter, around 7 or 8 April, when we managed to get the tubes off the first patient we had in the icu, which was a really great moment, seeing people getting better, leaving, gave the whole team a lot of hope. I usually worked the morning shift, but then there were no set times, you could work morning, night or afternoon, depending on what was needed. Sometimes we worked back to back shifts. Now, the hospital is no longer overwhelmed. Now we are doing more pcr tests and we find there are people who are infected who we wouldn’t have tested before. It’s not like it was in March. Now the people coming in are not so critically ill. But it could happen that within a month we end up like we were at the end of March, which would be awful. I remember a patient only a couple of years older than me who

We managed to take the tubes off the first patient we had in icu, and that was a great moment.

had to have a tracheotomy. When he woke up he couldn’t speak. He was upset with everyone and we couldn’t understand him and tried to tell him: Don’t worry, you’re awake, everything’s fine. We couldn’t understand why he was so upset, and we gave him a board and he wrote on it for us. He was upset because he didn’t know anything about his family and thought his wife and children had died of Covid. That was the most touching moment for me. It still gives me goosebumps. He knew his telephone number by heart and wrote it down and we rang his wife and his children, aged 15 and 16 years old. They all cried. He asked them about his parents and they were well too. He was the only one in the family who got really sick. Later, when he recovered, he sent us a lovely card and some sweets. Personally, the best thing was the teamwork and the support from colleagues. Sometimes you get on better with one or another, but now we are all so united that we have worked together really well. This was a very different time, one that we will never experience again. We all go back to our own lives and routines and forget the moment. I don’t know how we did it, I really don’t. I hope they develop a vaccine and are able to vaccinate the majority of the population, but I don’t think that’s the whole answer. I imagine this will go on for a while, perhaps one or two years. Now I am worried about the children going back to school in a fortnight, perhaps not so much for the younger ones, but for the older ones. I think the measures they are putting in are good and I think the children need to be with their peers again. My daughter of 10 years old wants to go back, but the little one, who is 5, likes being at home with us. My husband has been remote working and has looked after everything – the house, the children, everything. The hospital gave us the chance to stay for free in apartments that they rented for us. But MADRID — SPAIN my husband preferred me to be with them, and I felt the same. We have taken a small break, in a little village in Ávila, where my parents are from, very close to Madrid. I have been a nurse for twenty-two years and I think I am going to go back to it with more enthusiasm than ever. �