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The Impact of Coronavirus on Communities

COVID-19 is described by the NHS (2020) as “…a new illness that can affect your lungs and airways. It's caused by a virus called coronavirus.”. I first became aware of this coronavirus while on my first placement of my third year in mental health nursing. I had applied to carry out this placement with the Erasmus programme in another country which ended up being in Barcelona, Spain. As this is a personal reflective piece, I will be exploring my experience of the way it affected me, the people of Barcelona, the city itself and the hospital that I was completing my clinical hours in.

Everyone in the hospital was keeping on top of the news that was emerging from Wuhan surrounding the corona virus outbreak. At this time, it did seem as though it was “just another one of those news stories”. Perhaps even sensationalised media reporting at it’s finest and a way to evoke a strong emotional reaction from the public and of course sell more papers. Basically, it wasn’t taken seriously by the other nurses, myself included. Amongst the wider community, in Barcelona, things were business as usual. The metro service ran like clockwork with a train arriving every 2-3 minutes, albeit a very cosy encounter. The streets were an ever busy and bustling mix of those commuting to work, tourists and locals trying to navigate through the maze of bodies to their destination. Weeks passed like this with no real ripple in the status quo of the city’s operation. Then came the first reports of the deaths. It would seem that we had all underestimated this “common cold v2” as one of the nurses described. The illness was also appearing to spread faster than ever, news which unnerved me and appeared to shake some of the other staff.

Whispers began to travel the halls that there was a patient who was confirmed to have corona virus in the hospital. It was real. It had arrived.

There appeared to be an either hardy exterior or slightly dismissive attitude from some nurses in the way that a few seemed unphased and continued their work as usual. I was working in the ward of “urgencias de psquiatría” or “psychiatric emergencies” in English. We were therefore somewhat secluded from the rest of the hospital in that we were locked away at a corner of the hospital, some distance from the general wards. This had meant a sheltered experience from the scenes that festered behind other doors. One colleague guided me to deliver some lab results. And there it was. The reality.

Corridors lined with beds. Multiple patients crammed into minuscule rooms. Nurses using paper towels as masks. I was under no impression that this area was solely patients with COVID-19, yet I had a feeling that this was not what some would call a ‘usual’ shift on the general floor. Although some doctors and nurses were dripping with sweat, entranced in an iron strength focus, there was a beauty to the way this machine of many parts was operating. As a mental health student, I have not had much exposure to general wards, which made me wonder if this was ‘another day at the office’, nevertheless the dedication of these healthcare professionals was astounding and inspiring to me.

Towards the end of my time in Barcelona, the effects on the locals and their businesses could be seen. It was as though you didn’t even need to read the news, you could read peoples faces clearer than any article. The Spanish governments decision to enter a lockdown was drawing ever closer (Jones 2020).

I waited 15 minutes for my metro connection to the hospital, and to my surprise, seats were now available on the train; a recommendation was made by the higher powers to reduce the use of public transport. On my walk to the hospital I passed but merely two people; the life of the streets had died an eerie death. Most shops were closed but for a few supermarkets and pharmacies. The real epicentre of city now seemed to be the hospital. As the threat of lockdown lingered, I began to worry about my family back home. Although I had been following the news of what was occurring in Scotland, I could not have a firm grasp in my mind of the severity of the situation without being physically present there. While the worries of my family’s health grew within me and the fear of not being able to return and see them due to the lockdown, so grew the frightening feelings of anxiety; a feeling which I have no doubt has been experienced by many others around the world during this alarming time.

As mentioned earlier, coming from a mental health background I cannot help but ponder its importance throughout this pandemic. It has been said that most of the healthcare professionals that work in isolation units with patients do not receive any training in providing mental health care (Xiang et al. 2020); what does this mean for the future of our society? As the situation develops daily at home, the decision was taken to begin rolling back patient contact in the community and redeploying these nurses to other areas. Although I know that our hands are tied between a lack of resources and following the protocols that are passed down to us by the government, there lies a powerful fear in me that this is the beginning of a long and trying journey. I fear that those patients who are settled in the community are unable to access the support that they need to keep them out of hospital, meaning that they may eventually end up adding to already stretched inpatient services.

Although this reflective piece has been fraught with negative emotions of dread and apprehension, I would like to highlight something which is all too easily overlooked at times like this. The scene which I witnessed on the general floor of that hospital in Barcelona. The silent heroes and heroines that generate hope and put themselves on the frontline without need of validation of recognition. Healthcare professionals give me more hope for the future than most at this time and make me proud to be a mental health nursing student.

Reference List

NHS, 2020. Coronavirus (COVID-19). [online]. London: NHS. Available from: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/ [Accessed 19 March 2020].

JONES, S., 2020. Spain orders nationwide lockdown to battle coronavirus. [online]. London: The Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/spain-government-set-to-order-nationwide-coronavirus-lockdown [Accessed 21 March 2020].

XIANG, Y. et al., 2020. Timely mental health care for the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak is urgently needed. The Lancet, Psychiatry, 7(3), pp. 228-229.