An ICU Nurse's Perspective on COVID-19

Photograph of Capt. Allyssa Marie Montemayor by US Army Reserve, public domain.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in so many casualties that we must fight the tendency to become numb, so that we remember to take responsible precautions, but also to maintain our humanity in the face of so much suffering. Research has shown that an effective way to overcome the psychic numbing that prevents people from feeling empathy for large numbers of victims is to focus attention on the stories of individuals. In that vein, The Washington Post’s recent article “What seven ICU nurses want you to know about the battle against covid-19” does an excellent job of eliciting empathy from the reader with firsthand accounts of seven nurses who work in intensive care units and care for patients seriously ill with COVID-19. Not everyone knows someone personally who has been seriously ill with COVID, and for them, the pandemic can seem like an abstraction. Stories of individual victims, like a mom, intubated and in a hospital bed, listening over Zoom to her son play guitar and sing hymns, help put the human toll of the pandemic into perspective.

Read the Washington Post article here: What seven ICU nurses want you to know about the battle against covid-19