HEALTH PROFESSIONALS AND THE PANDEMIC.

One thing is the individual perception and the own point of view that one can have of a situation like the pandemic that we are experiencing. Another very different thing is to be on the front line in front of what happens, to have contact with infected people, people in danger of death, people who have lost a family member due to contagion, people in crisis due to isolation, people in crisis due to uncertainty of what will happen at a social, work or life level or the lives of those they love in the future.

It is one thing to speak from the passions that this topic arouses in the face of individual feelings. And another very different is to see death, chaos, pain, tragedy in the face every day, that is the work that health professionals have faced since this pandemic began, that is what we are doing because of the professions we choose, that is the risk of our work, we are witnesses in the crudest and hardest way of what is happening to us as humanity.

Many health professionals follow this path because at some point in our lives we could not stop hearing the voice of our vocation, we could not stop feeling the call of a life that was deeply linked with the lives of others. The pandemic will attest to the vocation, I cannot imagine the permanent risk of the professionals who now work in hospitals, I cannot imagine the fear, the insecurity, the pain they will feel with what they have had to handle in recent months. I can't put myself in their shoes when they quit their job and go home, going home may be a danger to their families for the first time in life.

However, if I can know what it feels like when an increasing number of consultants are afraid, feel pain, feel uncertainty as a result of the pandemic, if I can tell what is happening inside us to the professionals who are serving a large number as in no other time in our profession of panic attacks, insomnia, depression, if I can tell you what happens to us when many of our patients somatize, when many others feel hopeless, when some cannot bear so much isolation and many others begin to be very afraid to leave home. The danger of this pandemic is not only the covid, there are other dangers as harmful and pernicious that occur as a psychological consequence of a crisis as great as the one we are experiencing.

¿What happens in the emotions, in the thoughts, in the body and in the personality of the health professional? One of the biggest risks at work when caring for the pain of others, is that this pain seeps through the psychic layers of the professional, and without realizing it begins to weaken him, find those fissures that we all have and go into fragile points, settle silently and slyly in the psyche, weakening his body, mind and spirit.

The risk becomes great because we are also living the crisis that we are dealing with in others, we are immersed in the situation, our existence is also at risk, we are also concerned about survival, we also have uncertainty about the future, we are also vulnerable. Today more than ever we help from our own pain, today more than ever the vocation that led us down this path becomes unequivocal, one can only really help when one knows oneself its sorrows, its lack, its fears, its weaknesses; we are only company when we know that in the process we will also be transforming ourselves, when we understand that we do not have all the answers, but that we are open to asking ourselves the necessary questions in order to provide ourselves.

In a time so far removed from the bond, so empty of deep feelings. The lesson for me is that you can't give if you don't get involved, you can't accompany if you don't empathize, you can't sustain if you're not present, you can't do your job if what you chose is just a job and it's not a vocation. We will still have many challenges ahead of us, many demands that life will now bring us through what we need to live for our work in this sad situation, we still cannot say: "work accomplished".

But I sincerely hope that we can collect what inhabits our soul, that we can bring to the present our necessary learning at all levels, I hope that we find enough strength to create spaces of containment, spaces of accompaniment, meaningful spaces.

I hope that we find in our hearts the answers we need to hear and the words we need to speak for the good of the community.

Let us remember today more than ever that we are not infallible, that we too in a moment may need that place where we can feel welcomed, listened to, understood. Let us remember that our self-care is what allows us to care for others with dignity.

Dra. Isabel Ayala Vera

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

COMMERCIAL ENGINEER

JUNGIAN ANALYST IAAP

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The original article in Spanish has been published on JULY 29,2020;
found at www.paolaayalavera. jimdo.com, 
this has been translated for this publication, 
the rights to the text and the photographs are by 
Paola Ayala Vera. This article can be cited with 
the proper reference