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:
- 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.
- To understand the personal and professional risks and emotional burden experienced in providing this service and
- 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.