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In the small space where the protective gear will be placed, the visor hangs in a row. In an adjoining room there are hats, coats and respirators.
Louise Sameby, chief physician at Östra Hospital in Gothenburg, clenches her hands around the mask and shows how to make sure respiratory protection is in place.
– When you have patients on a ventilator, they are very sick, you often have to get very close. In the worst case, it involves double storage of equipment in certain work steps. It is slow to breathe, it rubs, it is difficult to see with the visor, it gets hot, it dries the mouth, you have to scream to be heard, he says.
– Once you go out, you are soaked, with scuff marks behind the mask and hair in all directions. But function precedes appearance.
Once inside the intensive care unitn, with four covid sites, a new seriously ill patient has just joined. The lungs have to be X-rayed and sometimes crowded, but staff work calmly and methodically despite uncomfortable protective clothing.
Beneath the surface, however, there is great concern and a work situation that is already taking its toll on employees.
– Some people panic when they put on the mouth guard. They feel that they cannot breathe and must find out when they will leave the room again so that they agree to enter, says nurse Joel Söderholm.
– There were many who only had two or three weeks of vacation this summer and there are those who are still waiting for their fourth week of vacation. Now it may not be possible to spend that week on vacation. So people are worried. How long will it take now?
Louise Sameby and Joel Söderholm in the small space where protective equipment is placed. Joel Söderholm begins by covering his nose to make it easier to seal the respiratory protection.
Photograph: Björn Larsson Rosvall / TT
Work within the intensive care unit it is heavy, both physically and mentally.
In a glass window a little further in the room, there are relatives who have come to the room to say goodbye to one of the other patients through the window.
Shortly after, the man dies.
– I don’t think people understand what it is to take care of these patients. People don’t understand how seriously ill can get, says Joel Söderholm.
That despite all the restrictions and alarms about the spread of the infection, there is congestion in public transport, shops or restaurants, it is difficult to accept, he continues.
– You may not get that sick, but an older relative or a relative of a friend can. Not being able to think that far is provocative.
Now the curves rise again. And the staff concerns with them.
There are doubts as to how the number of employees should be sufficient during Christmas and winter. And even bigger questions about how existing staff should cope.
– I’m very worried about that. We are tired and exhausted from the first wave and we have colleagues already on sick leave, says Louise Sameby.
– We do not know how many patients there will be, we do not know how long it will last, if the resources are exhausted and if they are exhausted, we do not know if it will be tonight in the passport itself or in a few weeks. All this generates a very great concern that is difficult to let go.
Yet amid all the hard work, there is also great pride in how quickly caring could change this spring.
Louise Sameby and Joel Söderholm also smiles as he remembers all the thank you cards from school classes and the food and sweets that were donated to the department during the spring. Sometimes it was the rescue during the long night shifts.
With all the knowledge about the disease that care has had time to accumulate, there are also positive signs in intensive care. Still.
– We think we see that there are shorter attention spans and fewer people get as sick as last time, says Louise Sameby.
– But it’s still early.
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