Kirsten Kernaghan is an Advanced Nurse Practitioner based at NHS Lothian’s Chalmers Sexual Health Service. In her blog, Kirsten explores the feelings of confusion, frustration and even envy brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. With support from her QN coach learn how Kirsten made sense of her importance as a nurse working on the Non-Frontline.
Since lockdown, all forms of media have been full of praise for the NHS and other key workers, who have all been doing an amazing job over the last 3 months. We have read heart-breaking accounts of families separated by quarantine and bereavement and seen the physical endurance displayed by staff caring for patients. As a nurse, I have watched this play out but very much from the side-lines.
My children were proud of me, but I was not proud of myself. As a nurse I wanted to help, care for patients, be there for my fellow nurses – I felt like I was letting people down by not being able to do more.
COVID has brought a mixture of feelings for many people, but for me, it brought feelings of helplessness, frustration and dare I say even a degree of envy towards those nurses on the ‘front line’. When lockdown happened our service pretty much ground to a halt and I felt embarrassment and guilt when I came home from work. My daughters would ask if I had seen any COVID patients or proudly state that the 8 PM clap on a Thurs was for me, a nurse working in the NHS. Friends and family would ask kindly whether work was ok and if I was coping, they were concerned and wanted to know if it was as horrendous as the media portrayed. The best answer I could give was that my email inbox was as clear as it had been for about 10 years!
My children were proud of me, but I was not proud of myself. As a nurse I wanted to help, care for patients, be there for my fellow nurses – I felt like I was letting people down by not being able to do more.
Then came a very well-timed session with my coach from the Queen’s Nursing Programme, which I completed last year. Kate has always been very insightful and gets me thinking in a way that helps me understand myself and my feelings so much more. With some gentle questioning and directing, there at the centre was my old nemesis – what I call my “Am I good enough?” gene, which rears its head from time to time. With the help of Kate, we focused on all the positive things that have happened within our service over the last 3 months, everything I have accomplished and we even practised how I would answer the dreaded question from kind friends, family and neighbours who I knew meant well.
So now when I am asked how work has been since lockdown I answer truthfully, but positively. COVID has brought our service a gift – the gift of time and the ability to stop. This time allows us to review what we have been doing, refocus on which patient groups we want to target, reassess which services we will reopen and how they will run. It has allowed us to pilot new ways of communicating with patients like setting up phone triage systems and NearMe video clinics. Many of these services we will continue using in the post-lockdown future. COVID has made us ‘think outside of the box’ so we can work out how to best deliver services to the most vulnerable patients and forge new links with previously unknown partners.
As a staff team, the pandemic has brought us closer together, we check in on one another much more often and have a far greater awareness of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We also have a better understanding of our own strengths and weaknesses. Without the time afforded by the lockdown, we would never have had this opportunity. We would have continued fire-fighting, always battling to try and meet the different needs of our patients and staff while running a busy service. For this opportunity, we should be grateful and it illustrates the fact that there is a silver lining to every cloud.
As for me, I am proud of where I work and what I do. My work colleagues have been proactive, flexible and accommodating through the hardest of times – together we can tackle anything with hard work, good humour and a smile.
