Psychological support

The role of nurses in the pandemic

Nursing team IntegraMédica Outpatients Clinics

At the beginning, everything was really uncertain, although we knew what had happened in other countries. But going through it yourself is different, because at the start we didn’t have all the Covid guidelines. We had to sort out our own procedures for informing patients and training staff. It was all new. As a nursing team, we drew up many protocols, which contributed to knowledge, gave us confidence and a platform from which to work safely. We were constantly drawing up new standards and care procedures, bringing in continual improvements from our own learning and from evidence coming from other countries. The nursing team were the first to have pcr tests for Sars-CoV2, which was an important role in the operation of medical centres because the auxiliary staff weren’t familiar with the technique and were unsure how to handle the exam or how to make sure they didn’t get infected. At that point, our role was to educate and deal with their fears. It was hard, but we managed, and were able to make the staff feel secure and confident, because we knew there was going to be a surge in infections and we would need more technical support to handle the number of patients, which we were able to prepare for together with the auxiliary teams.