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Hospital
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2021-01-27
Losing Grandma
A week and a half ago was my grandmother's 90th birthday. I shared here about our family's disappointment at not getting to have a big party and instead visiting her at her window. Now she's in the ER, awaiting a transfer to hospice. It doesn't seem to be COVID, although the tests aren't back yet. No one knows what happened or why. There are no ICU beds available and resources in general are limited to investigate why a 90 year old woman who was fine 12 hours earlier is now unresponsive and on a ventilator. No one can go visit her. We're not sure if we will be able to visit her at the hospice. Grandma has had health scares before but nothing like this. Before we would be coordinating visitors and making sure someone was by to see her everyday, even if she was unconscious. Now we’re limited to the family group text as my aunt follows up with doctors by phone and relays information to the rest of us. She’s pulled through before but this time feels different. The doctors are all stretched so thin and resources are so limited that all the odds are against her. I used to take Grandma out at least once or twice a month. We’d go to a movie or just lunch. Maybe run some errands. I haven’t seen her without a window between us in nearly a year. I’m probably never going to get to hug her again. -
2020-05-13
Birthday celebration
The workers at Centre universitaire de santé McGill celebrate the 92nd birthday of a patient in quarantine. -
2021-01-21
Medics go on hunger strike in Peru amid Covid-19 second wave
Peruvian medics and health care workers are on a hunger strike to call attention to the need for further funding as the country struggles with its second wave of Covid-19. There is also a call to remove the country's Health Social Security, Fiorella Molinelli, over the mismanagement of Covid health and isolation centers, but Molinelli has yet to respond. -
2021-01-24
SE NM’s Hospital COVID-Bed Capacity
This information displayed on this webpage contains an interactive map with corresponding data summary of the dedicated COVID beds and general capacity of hospitals in southeastern New Mexico for January 24th, 2021. This snapshot demonstrates a reasonably live and present condition of the availability for urgent and emergent COVID medical care within that geographic region and at that date and time. -
2021-01-21
MW: Travel Nurses
My sister apparently graduated nursing school at the best and worst time. The tragedy of watching COVID-19 has left the hospital inundated and patients dying. The fear of coming home and being infected. However, new opportunities have presented themselves. My sister is working as a travel nurse for COVID units and this is a rather lucrative situation. If you knew how much these travel nurses were getting paid your mouth would drop. Let's just say the doctors at the hospital are getting jealous. -
2020-12-11
Mother’s Journal Entries During Covid
Corona was definitely hard for many families with health problems. I feel as though it was also difficult for families with people on the frontlines of the virus. My mother is a nurse at a local hospital. Because of her job, none of my family members and/or friends wanted to be around me. She works in the ICU so she is dealing with Covid positive patients constantly. Her journal entries include how she felt while working her job as well as how it affected her family-wise. -
2020-12-01
Behind the Scenes of a COVID-19 Nurse
This photograph went viral on Instagram, with many people I know sharing the post on their stories in order to spread awareness about how hard nurses and other healthcare employees are working. I think this photo is really important because it shows a side of the pandemic that no one is really thinking about. It shows how healthcare workers are unable to see their families because they are tirelessly working with COVID-19 patients and don’t want to infect their families. This shows a marginalized group of people, healthcare workers, who haven’t really had their voices heard or cared about enough through the pandemic. Healthcare workers have not been appreciated enough for all the hard work and sacrifices they have made for their patients during 2020. In addition, this post gives voices to women who have often been silenced, allowing Syndi Lane to share her story with the world, encouraging others to follow. -
2020-12-01
Melrose Wakefield Hospital COVID precautions
One of my coworkers tested positive for COVID-19, so all the employees got tested to ensure we were all being safe at work. I think the photos I captured at Melrose Wakefield Hospital tells a story about all the precautions to stay safe and healthy in an unprecedented time. These photos respond to the needs and considerations of an ethical archive because it shows what precautions are being taken both inside and outside a hospital. In The Ethical Archivist, the author wrote about the ethics of acquisition, which documents have permanent or evidentiary value. I think these pictures may be seemingly unimportant to most people, but to historians this is data that shows what types of mandates and precautions were put in place during a worldwide pandemic. -
2020-12-11
Suffolk University Houses Medical Workers During Pandemic
In this article, written by Caroline Enos from Suffolk University, it states how Suffolk was willing to open its arms to the medical workers in the area. This article really resonates with me because these are the same rooms that I lived in as a freshman, and now they are being gifted to medical workers. These 30 staff members who are working at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, are scared to go home to their families in hopes they would not get them sick. This article is definitely something of interest for future historians because it shows parts of the Boston community coming together to help each other and stay safe in the midst of a deadly virus. The story also resonates with members of my generation because we are seeing our University step up and give back to our community. -
2020-12-14
NY Nurse Receives 1st Dose of COVID vaccine in U.S.
This article shows the first coronavirus vaccine being given to a critical care nurse in NY. This is a huge milestone for the U.S. because it was the biggest effort to produce a vaccine in our history. This would be something for future historians to discover because it is so significant for the year of 2020. This has been a year of hardship for everyone and I think this vaccine is a glimmer of hope for many people. There are currently 3 million vaccinations being flown around the nation right now, hoping to help more people and save many lives. -
2020-12-04
Field Hospital
A volunteer adjusts the opening to a tent in an indoor field hospital in Montreal -
2020-05-13
Mme Benoit fête ses 92 ans au CUSM - Mrs. Benoit celebrates her 92nd birthday at the MUHC
Pierrette Benoit celebrated her 92nd birthday while in hospital recovering from COVID-19. The staff on C8 at the Royal Victoria Hospital of the MUHC ensured her day was special by presenting her with a cake and singing her Happy Birthday. Gestures like these are just an example of how MUHC staff go above and beyond for their patients. -
2020-04-06
Anxieties over COVID-19 and possible PPE shortages prompting some health care workers to draft wills
Discussion with Dr. Michelle Cohen about the dangers of working in the hospitals during COVID and her concerns over PPE shortages. -
2020-11-20
Alberta Health Services Photo
This is a photograph of a Canadian ICU physician calling a patient's family to inform them of the patient's passing. The photo highlights the impact of the second wave which has hit Alberta badly in November and December 2020. -
2020-08-07
Health Insurance Providers mailing reusable masks for medical appointments
On August 7, 2020 I received a message from a relative that their health insurance company had mailed them a small envelope with a cloth mask. At the time in Oklahoma, masks were still fairly difficult to find in stores and reusable masks were still available mostly online at considerable costs. The elderly relative said that her and her husband were told to use these if they went to a doctor's appointment or to a hospital. The pamphlet also advised them on the best way to wash and dry the mask for further use. This is something that seems like a small cost to the company, but could benefit everyone if it helped prevent people from getting sick, especially from COVID-19. -
2020-10-03
Jessica Fisher Oral History, 2020/10/03
Graduate student at ASU, Angelica S Ramos interviews mother of a new born baby. In this interview she discussed the struggles with prenatal care and her experience with birth during COVID. Fisher also discusses family support as a new mother amidst the pandemic and how her interactions with her family has changed. She mentions her worries with being high risk for contraction and how she copes with her worries. She also talks about her work as a teacher and how much that environment has changed for her and her students. In this interview, Fisher also talks about her close relationship with her grandmother who lived in assisted living and how their relationship has been forced to change. Lastly, she talks about her hopes for the future. -
2020-11-09
Elderly COVID-19 survivors with no home find warmth at Hyderabad hospital
There are many older people who don't really have family connections in the world. It's interesting to see cases of people who were living in adult care facilities and contracted Covid. They end up in the hospital to be treated but then there is nowhere to send them after. It's interesting to see stories like this and I wonder how it will end for Ms. Nagendramma. -
2020-09-10
Art recreations for R U OK? Day, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne
As part of RU OK? Day activities for staff in this challenging year, hospital teams were invited to submit a team photo on the internal social media network. The Palliative Care team responded with a compilation recreating famous art works. The Paul Getty Museum popularized the phenomenon of recreating famous art works with a handful of household items earlier in the year. -
2020-06-11
Tunnels of Love art installation project, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne
Like many hospitals, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne has a network of tunnels connecting campus buildings. The tunnels are customarily unadorned and very utilitarian in nature. The hospital's Art Curator decided to brighten them up to provide some light and cheer to staff and patients during Melbourne's COVID first wave. She called on former artists-in-residence to create thank you posters and collaborated with other staff to create works for themed tunnel sections including "Poet's Corner", "Archives Alcove" and "Pets in Iso". A straight section of the tunnels was termed "Avenue of Honour" and bore individual thank yous acknowledging each hospital department. The entire project was called the "Tunnels of Love" and its headline image (pictured) was a heart collage the Art Curator devised from photographs of flowers and plants she had taken during garden walks. There has been lots of amazing feedback to the project. It has provided a boost to the spirits of many who transit through the tunnels on a daily basis and the installation continues to evolve. -
2020-07-15
COVID uniform
This is a picture of my sister on her first day on the COVID unit as St. Joseph's Hospital. She was transferred from the Neuro-ICU because the size of COVID admissions. The managers put a strong focus on the importance of gearing up, they were told specifically that "nothing is an emergency" but after the first few days she learned that wasn't the case. It typically takes about 4 to 5 minutes to get completely geared up to go into a patients room. The problem is when a patients O2 levels drop hard and fast. Then the nurses are faced with the choice to go in without proper protection or take the time to get geared up. Nurses face life and death situations normally, a pandemic just amplifies it to a level that no one was prepared for. -
2020-07-18
A Trip to a Silent Hospital
On July 18th 2020 in the late afternoon, I started experiencing some concerning not Covid-related symptoms and I made the decision to go to the Emergency Room. I’ve had chronic health issues all my life, so this wasn’t an unfamiliar experience. However, I’d been isolating since March and I was terrified of having to potentially go into a situation that was unknown in the middle of the pandemic. The things I remember most about the visit are how utterly desolate the places in the hospital felt, and how silent it was. I’m used to packed waiting rooms and constant noise. This visit was very different. After a brief screening in a large, mostly empty lobby with large barriers and protective measures in place, they assessed that I was not a potential COVID patient and sent me to a waiting room that I was alone in for most of my visit. There was no real chatter, mostly just silence, broken by the TV. The silence continued even back into the ER, where it seemed that the staff was spread thin. The most notable sounds were occasional low conversations and the sounds of medical equipment being moved around and the beeps and pulses. Even when evaluating me, while warm, the conversations sounded more terse and to the point. Everything moved more quickly. In some ways, it felt like being in an abandoned building. Everything was dark, silent, and empty in the areas where I was. -
2020-04
Medical Intensivists (COVID-19)
The portraits overlay a story mostly untold of the feverish “backroom” effort that distinguishes order from chaos inside hospitals suddenly at risk of being overrun. The photographs also explore the new people-and-place aesthetics of casual videoconferencing as first experienced in recent months by millions of people worldwide. -
2020-04-03
Home brew hand sanitiser, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne
During the first wave of the pandemic in Victoria hand sanitiser and the ethanol used to make it were in global short supply. The hospital Pharmacy collaborated with local gin distillery Suter & Sons to make its own home brew hand sanitiser. -
2020-07-02
Yemen Covid in A Time Of War
Yemen is a country in a state of war. The Saudi coalition vs the Houthi Rebels. Saudi bombing raids have been destroying hospitals in a country with an already weak healthcare system. Humanitarian aid had been dwindiling since the Covid pandemic started. Now with a Covid crisis and humanitarian crisis how can the Yemeni people cope. -
2020-07-10
DNR - A Death Sentence
My sisters are nurses on the COVID unit at St. Josephs Hospital and they are starting to see a lot more of these signs popping up. So many in fact that they are having to make their own because so many patients have received 'Do Not Resuscitate' orders. For those who don't know, this is an order caretakers follow when a patient is excluded from basic recovery care when their heart stops or they stop breathing. On the COVID unit, patients and families are facing their own mortality through this decision. This order has become more common during this pandemic because of how easily it is transmitted. Sometimes the order is requested by the patient but recently the decision has fallen on the doctors in charge. Visitors aren't allowed and ventilated patients can't provide input. The news is often broken to the families through a phone call or, if your lucky, a Zoom call. These orders are put in place when someone is nearing the end of their fight with COVID, to prevent the transmission of the virus to the nursing staff. This is a screenshot from my sisters Instagram showing an example of a hand made sign on her unit. -
2020-04-01
Surviving the Front-Line of Covid-19
This story is about my experience working in a NYC hospital - being on the front-line as the pandemic hits NYC. It is important for me to tell, so that everyone is aware of how unprepared we were. Had we prepared, we could have saved lives. -
2020-03-23
Mystery Virus
In late March of 2020, I came down with a terrible migraine. Now, I get migraines a lot, at least once a week, but they usually go away with some naproxen or a nap conveniently timed around when it would be a more responsible decision for me to be doing my homework instead of sleeping. This migraine lasted for a full week. Standing up made my vision go blurry, and any light or noise would cause intense throbbing behind my eyes. It felt like my brain was swelling up and knocking on my skull walls begging to be released from my head. I spent most of my time splayed out on the living room floor covered in blankets with ice packs propped up around my head and neck to try to soothe the pain. I scheduled a tele-health visit with my doctor and she told me since migraines aren’t uncommon for me that I should just wait it out and drink lots of fluids, so I waited, but then I caught some mysterious virus which seemed to have a personal vendetta against my tonsils. My tonsils got so huge. They swelled up so much that even drinking became difficult, and very quickly a thick film of white gunk started to grow all over the back of my throat. I had a fever, chills, and a sore throat. Usually at that point I would go into the doctor’s office and get a strep swab, but this was during the second week of full lockdown in the US and doctors were not seeing patients in person. After multiple attempts to send my doctor precariously-angled photos of the back of my throat, they decided that if after a few more days of drinking fluids I still felt sick, I needed to go to the ER simply because it was the only place that was open in town and they could give me some tests. Going to the ER during the first wave of COVID-19 was absolutely terrifying. The first thing I saw when I pulled into the parking lot was the abundance of signs listing the symptoms of COVID-19. There were multiple entrances, one for people who had no symptoms, and a literal shipping container full of testing materials and staff in extensive PPE for those who did. I was just there for a strep test and someone to make sure I didn’t have mono or meningitis, so I went through the normal entrance. After triage, two nurses fully dressed in hazmat suits came up to me. They told me that since I had had a fever within the past few days, I had to be brought to the COVID-19 wing of the hospital. They took me outside to a golf cart where another hazmat suit-wearing driver drove me down to the basement level of the hospital that had not been part of the hospital in years but reopened for the sake of coronavirus. It honestly seemed like the doctors and nurses were bored and had nothing else to do because over the next few hours I had about ten random medical staff come poke and prod at me in my room. They took blood samples, shone lights into my eyes, and stuck probably the longest swab I have ever seen up my nose to tickle my brain for any COVID-19 particles. Hospitals are scary places to me and being surrounded by nurses and doctors decked out in layers of wearable plastic made me feel even more uneasy. I knew they were being safe, but it was difficult to stay calm when I couldn’t see the faces of the people I while being treated by. Eventually, they decided I had an intractable migraine along with something else and gave me shots of sumatriptan which made me drowsy. All of the tests came back negative and I was told to go home and, once more, drink lots of fluids. After another week on the couch and endless cups of tea, my mysteriously giant tonsils finally calmed down and my migraine decided it was bored of torturing me. I am extremely grateful that I did not have COVID-19, but it was an incredibly strange experience to have to receive relatively serious healthcare unrelated to COVID-19 during the pandemic. Even more than that though, I am so grateful for the healthcare workers that put their lives at risk for people in need every single day. -
2020-04-18
A Tutti Voi...Grazie
this is a photograph of a mural on a hospital wall in Brescia, Italy where it translates to “To you all….Thanks.” It is another piece of art that reminds us that we are all in this together and to thank our healthcare workers. I think as time goes on we tend to get sick of hearing about the pandemic and Covid-19 and go about our daily lives. We as a society often times need reminders and I think art provides that in an appealing and beautiful way. A giant graffiti depicting medical staff holding a figure shaped as a boot representing Italy and reading " To you all… Thanks", is painted on a side of the Brescia hospital, Italy, Monday, March 16, 2020. -
2020-08-28
Conversacción sobre el COVID
La tía de mi esposo se murió hace una semana de COVID en Arequipa, Peru. Ahora, su tío también tiene COVID. Mi esposo llamó a su primo para conversar de los eventos, y grabé la última parte de la conversación. Lo que me impresionó era que decía que había tantas bolsas des cadáveres, y que la gente moría de asusto o paro cardiaco porque el temor les consumía. -
2020-04-28
New Norms in the Healthcare Environment
As the spread of Covid grew larger and larger, masks and face shields became the new norm at the hospital. New precautions included temperature checks at the entrances, reuse of PPE, and a completely new hospital environment. Whole wings of the hospital previously dedicated to elective surgeries were cleared out preparing for the surge. Patients were not allowed visitors and when they needed to see a friendly face the most, all they were able to see was our eyes. -
2020-05-01
Chronicles of quarantine
This is a diary of 8-week quarantine. Coming back from another country at the beginning of pandemic, hospital, some sad thoughts - it is an unfinished diary. Life continues and we should get used to the new world so I stopped this diary. Although in my home country, Belarus happens worse things that I described in a diary. We have revolution right now, people die, peaceful protesters are bitten, tortured, and gotten to prison. But it’s a whole another part of my life, which I could not even imagine at the beginning of a pandemic. So enjoy the diary of innocent and naive Yana from the past. -
2020-07-14
Decal with social distancing message, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne
This floor decal in the hospital forecourt was introduced in June 2020, one of many communications produced for both internal and external hospital audiences in response to the course of the pandemic and evolving government public health guidelines and restrictions. -
2020-07-04
Woman angry she was asked to leave ER after refusing to wear a mask
A tweet, which has gone "viral" in which a woman films an encounter she had with the triage nurse at St. Joseph's Hospital in Toronto where she says she went after suspecting she had broken a finger. As the staff in the video repeatedly tell her, Ministry of Health policy states everyone in hospital must wear a mask, and a hospital may refuse treatment to a patient who refuses to comply. The staff also repeatedly informs the woman filming in a health care centre is not permitted, under law, due to concerns for the privacy of other patients. While many are very angry with this individual, and government and the hospital have roundly condemned her behaviour, others in the comment section for this tweet agree with her and defend her. -
2020-06-06
Chronically ill and highly vulnerable amid Covid-19
During this Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve learnt that some people might be more vulnerable than others. Who is high risk? I am! A quick google search shows that a person taking high doses of steroids or immunosuppressant medication can be considered as clinically extremely vulnerable. I take both. The fear is real. It has always been here but now I need to be even more careful. The lines are blurred; how ill do I need to feel before deciding that I need to go to the hospital, an incubator for all kinds of infections and an even more potential risk in catching the deadly virus? As much as the hospital is the solution, it might as well be death welcoming me with arms open. The number of infected persons has rocketing at a time, and I could not help falling sick despite not having gone out a single time during the 3-month lockdown. It was finally time to go there, the hospital! I went armed to the teeth with my mask, gloves, and a sanitiser, cautious but still anxious, and I was met with an eerily almost empty building. The place which was usually buzzing with activity at all times of the day only had a handful of doctors and nurses but no patients! It seemed like everyone had respected the lockdown measures to the letter. I was relieved and I was cared for with the staff following all precautionary measures. In a measure of solidarity, the people had decided to respect the lockdown rules to avoid the spread of the virus and had in unthinkingly doing so, potentially saved the health of many vulnerable patients. I felt safe and I still do. Caring for others is after all a social responsibility and an expression of what it means to be human and humane.