Heroes, or Rather Not. The Healthcare Professionals’ Year of the Pandemic

Abstract

This chapter recounts 1 year of the pandemic from the Italian healthcare professionals’ point of view, throughout their narratives collected within narrative medicine research and educational activities carried out together with my working group in this challenging period.

This meta-narrative develops from the scenario before the pandemic, in which burnout was increasing among healthcare professionals, through the first traumatic phase of the emergency, quite dramatic in Italy, moving towards the following so-called “waves” of contagions. Throughout the story, I have tried to focus my attention on the health workers’ expressed emotions and thoughts.

In the final part of the chapter, I have collected the most helpful resources for healthcare professionals’ wellbeing, included the use of narrative and arts. They are simple interventions able to help overcome possible trauma and encourage the sharing of experiences.

With this text, I intend to give voice to the many health workers’ accounts I have had the opportunity to listen to and welcome in this time, with the belief that from their own words we can find the way to preserve their wellbeing and, in the end, take care of the healthcare system. Nowadays, in the middle of 2021, the worst seems to have been overcome; this is the time to collect all the memories, to reflect on what we have learned, and not to forget.

“E il mio maestro mi insegnò com’è difficile trovare l’alba dentro l’imbrunire.”

“And my master taught me how hard it is to find the sunrise down in the twilight.” 

Franco Battiato