Program

COVID and The Impact on RNs – An Artistic Exhibit on the Emotional Aspects of Going into Long Term Care Homes During the First Wave of the Pandemic

May 27, 2022 from 1:30pm PDT to 2:00pm PDT

Background: COVID-19 disease has changed the world in the way we live, relate, communicate and provide health care. Ontario’s IPAC-SWAT strategy deployed nurses and physicians to Long Term Care facilities (LTCFs) in Ontario, Canada to aggressively attempt to flatten the COVID-19 curve.

Purpose:

  1. To describe the experience of providing infection control and education to the LTCFs and retirement homes during the first COVID-19 wave of the pandemic.
  2. To understand the personal and professional risks and emotional burden experienced in providing this service and
  3. To create awareness and new knowledge of this nursing work, presented in an artistic way to evoke a meaningful and aesthetic understanding of the experience.

Method: This arts-based dissemination makes visible nurses’ experiences providing COVID-19 preparedness, education and support to Long Term Care homes. Using layered qualitative arts-based analysis, thematic poetry, digital art and paintings were used to represent the data. Themes of “Controlling the viral load and fear”; “Self-protection-sustaining practice” and “The Power of collegial co-reciprocal trust” are presented in an embodied recitation.

Conclusion: A culture of caring was manifested in the presence of living with and working through the pandemic to assist LTCFs and retirement homes to reduce COVID-19 outbreaks. In amidst personal fear, uncertainty and risk, nurses witnessed the devastation, despair and death. Integral to this experience was the realization that there was a —Collective Power of People—working together in the first wave…whatever it took and will continue to take, to finally flatten the COVID-19 curve.

 

Speakers / Panelists