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

When the patients went home, we celebrated with music and clapping

covadonga medrano Nurse Virgen del Mar Hospital

I have worked for ten years in the Intensive Care Unit. I love this work and I think it’s the best. I have never found it hard to work under the pressure of it. There came a point where I wanted a bit of a change of direction and I changed to x-ray. Now I work in outpatient consultations. As well as working in the hospital, I also work at a care home. I was really afraid of catching coronavirus. I would go in with my masks and gear until one day they said: Cova! You need to move from outpatient consultations to work in intensive care, because that’s what you know best and your colleagues need you. I remember that day really well, because it all happened at lightning speed, my God! People were dying… I had worked before as a nurse in intensive care, and there had been people who went into cardiac arrest, strokes, hard stuff, but it wasn’t an everyday occurance. In ten years, I had never seen anything like those worst days. Every day there were people whose hearts stopped, intubations and watching people die. I think that was the hardest thing I ever went through.

I hadn’t cried in a long time, I think since my mother died, and this whole time has been so bad, so much fear, so much uncertainty, fear of getting home and wondering: Have I passed it on to my daughters? I have always been strong in the face of fear, and I have been through a lot of times in life when I was afraid, but this made me realise that the most important things are your health and your Every discharge from icu we family. Without those, you are nothing. have treated like Christmas, When I was in the icu, many colleagues with music and applause. didn’t agree with us using tablets for video calls and phone calls from families. They said it affected the patients too much. Personally, I have seen people respond really well to it, and seeing them lift even a finger or seeing a change in their heartbeat is really important to me. Every day I have worked in icu I have tried to put patients in contact with their families. My colleague and I firmly believe that this works and really helps the patients. Every time a patient is moved out of intensive care, we have celebrated as if it’s Christmas, with music and applause. Many patients with poor prognosis recovered, who previously looked as though they weren’t going to make it. There are a lot of bright spots – like the time when a patient came back the month after they had been discharged, just to thank us. Or there was my colleague Victor, an auxiliary nurse who got really sick, and who sent me a message just to say: Thank you! And how, because I am one of the few who has family, my colleagues would change shifts with me so I could have more days off. I think I had Covid without symptoms. I am not sure when it was, but there was a time when I felt quite bad, very tired, but it passed. And there were weeks on end where I just worked the whole time, and at two jobs. As well as my home. I would think: Is this normal? Sometimes I needed to relax, I just wanted to help out at home, and I would say to my husband: let me at least wash up. My husband’s name is Alberto and my daughters are Covadonga, 7 years old, and Carlota, 5 years old, and then there’s Bruno, our dog. The name Covadonga is Asturian and it comes from the name of a battle. The person who has felt it the most is my older daughter. She is very sensitive and was always saying to me:

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mama, please don’t get infected, please don’t do anything at home, why didn’t you choose a different profession? Mama, please help as much as you can, but don’t catch the bug. I think if I died and came back, I would still choose to be a nurse 100 times over, and I say that to my daughters, my friends and anyone who asks. The song, Resistiré (I will make it through) became our anthem. I have many regrets. The main one is the deaths. Each death feels like a failure. At the same time, I think about how much we fought and I believe we are all winners in this tough situation. I had a carpal tunnel operation on my hands recently, but I am better now. On 10 September I will probably go back to work, because I still have stitches. I spoke to my supervisor and they told me things are quite bad again. Now, instead of Covid patients occupying one floor like before, they have two. I hope that if things get bad again I can go back and help. �

No time to think

clara gonzález Healthcare Supervisor Sanitas Healthcare Funding I think the company has looked after the health of its customers right from day one. They tell us to make sure every sick person has everything they need, and that we do all we can to meet every need.

I am a nurse and I have worked in health management for seventeen years. That day in March when they said we were going into lockdown I took home the bare minimum. Just my laptop - that’s about it. I remember it was a Thursday. I thought I would be at home for fifteen days but I didn’t go back to the office until 22 June.

Our colleagues in the call centre in Madrid couldn’t manage all the calls they were receiving and they asked our team for volunteers to help with the call centre and with video calls. The rest of us took on the work of those who were moved to help with the crisis.

Then the hospitals started to collapse and there weren’t enough beds. We had to move people from one centre to another. The Sanitas Hospital in Barcelona became a Covid specialist centre. We tripled the capacity of this hospital. It was really hard, especially the first days and weeks, until the numbers started to go down.

We had to change the patient list every day. I remember once when a patient wasn’t listed on entries or discharges. It was a patient of my own age who had been in ICU for almost a month. I knew him, he was a widower with a son of the

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same age as my daughter: 17 years old. The worst thing was to think that boy might lose his other parent. Thankfully, that didn’t happen and the man got better.

At the beginning, families found it hard to all be at home 24-hours a day. But I think we have learnt that our lives were really too busy and we didn’t have any time for reflection.

I also found my teenage daughter difficult at the beginning. She was very stressed, but she became calmer, more thoughtful and helpful, which helped our relationship a lot. My husband spent some time furloughed (unemployed but with a right to part of his salary), but thankfully soon went back to work.

Although it has had its good side, I wouldn’t want to go back to lockdown. �

United as a team

hilda vargas Head of Nursing San José de Arica Hospital

«Our profession is very well organised, we work with standards and protocols that must be followed strictly. We have very strict guidelines, and the word “uncertainty” is in itself very stressful for healthcare workers. That is why it has been very important to keep the team united, giving them all the chance to express themselves and make their voice heard».