“We Want to Live Also”

Read this article “The Marathon Crisis: We Want to Live Also” By Karen Foli

This was a very difficult article to read, as I’m sure it was for many front-line workers. As I was reading the different forms of trauma, I realized that in the past year I have experienced them all. Honestly this past year of nursing has changed me not only as a nurse but my everyday self. I remember the times when my patients died alone, I remember calling patients family members to tell them their loved one had been transferred to the ICU, I remember being screamed at over the phone because family couldn’t come in, I remember my manager telling us we had enough PPE but then refusing to go in a patients room when they requested to speak to the manager and I remember coming home and crying almost every day of the first wave.

They never taught us in school how to deal with the trauma we see and experience as nurses. You’d get the occasional teacher who would tell a sad story or talk about how there is nothing worse than losing a patient and you’d learn about what to do next (ie calling the doctor, notifying the family etc.) but no one talked about how to deal with it when you walked out of work. I think as a profession it’s a very big gap in our learning, but at the same time, how do you teach someone how to deal with what we go through?