Covid 19 and Alternative Structures of Care

written by: Sara Yinling Post Illustrated by: Rachel Marie-Crane Williams

November 2021 After three months of a lapsed contract between my nursing union and my hospital administration, a new contract is finally on the table. It offers some nice things, like incentive pay, more break shifts.

We have to do it.

Should I stick with the union? Or vote no in hopes that we can work towards a strike?

a strike???

We get to say how we feel and how the last two-ish years have changed us. We will never be the same. It’s the same crap! They have Zero respect and greed fueled decisions that affect our family and future. It’s a different world now!

January 2021 There’s a feeling of muted crisis in the air. It has always existed but working for two years under Covid conditions is driving nurses to their edge.

I’ve spent one too many days working short staffed and underpaid on the county wards.

I just got the clinic job I applied for so I’m leaving inpatient.

yeah… I’m gonna stay overtime again today; we’re down 3 nurses at 7.

October 2021

I do have some survivor’s guilt for leaving the inpatient Unit.

I’m so glad I left.

PING

2:00

How’s the hospital?

Bedside is killing me...

What was the moment that drove me to leave bedside nursing? For everyone it is different. I think I experienced it as a slow erosion, exposing a contradiction that was always there about what care work can be and what it is in a hospital setting.

2020 In 2020, we saw the ways in which mutual aid became trendy; the ways it was commodified or used as a coverup for charity. Despite that, I believe in it.

Which is what led me all those evenings, after the murder of George Floyd, to change out of my scrubs at work and walk down into “CHOP” to deliver bagfuls of supplies from the hospital. My friends and I, many of whom are also nurses and street medics, saw the need within our medic collective to pass along trainings we had learned. We new what care work could be. It was more than what was happening inside the hospital. .

This will help, it’s liquid antacid mixed with water.

But even as our street medic collective strengthened and sunk its teeth into de-institutionalized care, the daily grind of hospital life started tugging on nurses more. People weren’t talking about the protests at work. There wasn’t time. And that’s the thing about short staffing; you can’t care for people in the way you want to, and you can’t bring the parts of you in the hospital that would make you feel whole.

Hurry Up!!!!!

Calm Down!

My moments setting up the wound care room before the patient came in became one of my only times of calm. I’d turn on loud pop music and try to disappear.

Nurses describe the experience of numbing. It’s a learned coping skill. Staying in the moment can make a shift worse.

I remember one of the hardest parts of caring for Covid pediatric patients was being told that we shouldn’t go into the rooms of our patients.We were kept apart from our patients by only a door, hospital policies, and fear of contamination. It felt wrong. listen, Blah, nursing is not inherently blah, blah, I’m not healing. You’re gonna need to find allowed blah blah blah that on your own

But moments of healing that do happen in the hospital… this will help her rest, you should try to sleep too.

They happen outside of the structures in place. They happen in the moments...

Summer, 2020 They happened despite the oceans of silence about the protests.

All of this is so hard right now.

Tell me about it, the hospital just furloughed me because of the budget.

They don’t care about us at all.

The hospital administration banks on our drive towards healing despite the endless barriers they put in healing’s way. But is it enough?

November, 2021 I don’t think this vote yes or no will change the hospital sufficiently for hospital workers to feel valued, after two years of existing under Covid, under mandatory furloughs, inconsistent information, short staffing, under pay. People will choose their own paths out: leaving, continuing, building up alternative structures in addition or apart from their hospital jobs.

Our Unity is our Power.

written by Kyce Bello