Right now, everyone is suffering from Coronavirus. I believe that everyone is playing their part. But especially, the medical team is going all out for Korea. I interviewed a nurse at a convalescent hospital. She worked most years at university hospitals with 12 years of her career, and right now she’s working at a convalescent hospital.

▲ Kyoung Mi Park

▲ by Yeojin Park

Mostly, chronic disease patients such as senile dementia stay at convalescent hospitals. All patients have caregivers. Caregivers assist their everyday life like having meals, walking, excretion, taking pills, and more things. Doctors prescribe for chronic disease, and nurses manage caregivers and record each of their administrative wards.

For sure, hospitals care much about the prevention of COVID-19 in Korea. In her hospital, caregivers’ going out is not allowed. They need to be with their patient all day. For nurses and doctors, they commute every day. Beforehand, their foot traffic investigation progressed. Also, the hospital set a limit on their movement. They have the COVID-19 test twice a week. She said that the most heartbreaking rule is that guardian’s visiting is completely not allowed even when the patient dies. Because of this, the patient's depression gets worse. They can only have video calls with their family.

The Korean government will make health care providers who belong to medical institutions get vaccination preferentially. For this, she said that that must be expected, but she feels insecurity as a part of a family. Then I asked about the difficulties of her job in this pandemic. She felt suffocated from wearing a mask for a long time, more than 9 hours a day only except for mealtime. And her hands get chapped because she has to wash her hands countless times every day, also because of hand sanitizers.

Lastly, she wanted to tell this to students aspiring nurses. After 3 months that people became nurses, 50 percent of them quit. Nurse as a job is not for having a high social status, so you need a vocation. It means that you have to work for your patient. Either I didn’t know the meaning of my work when I just became a nurse. Right now, my heart goes out to my patient a lot. When I stopped working for a moment, I could understand them because I could put myself in their place. Then I realize that nurses don’t try to consider them. It’s the most important thing to care for your patients. And working as a nurse is worthwhile when I feel a bond with them. I’m so grateful to be a nurse, so I can give help to someone.