TILBURG –
At the request of Omroep Brabant, Karin van der Staak (33) from Drunen talks about her work at the Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital in Tilburg. She is a nurse in the intensive care unit, where the most ill corona patients are often kept in artificial coma. By reading aloud and putting on their favorite music, she searches for a personal note.
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“I do everything I can to give corona patients in intensive care a touch of personality in care. Because between all devices and nurses and doctors who look like aliens, there is a person …
Anonymous
It is not that easy. For example, one family member may only visit for thirty minutes a day. Just like the people who lie here, they have to deal with hospital staff who are completely wrapped up: snuff, isolation suit, hair net, gloves. Only my eyes are visible. I provide care almost anonymously.
So we still get a bit of a face. Literally.
Recently, we as staff try to do something about this. We stick cards with names and photos of our heads on the suits we wear. Then, when awake, patients see loved ones and colleagues who they are dealing with. So we still get a bit of a face. Literally.
Hobbies
Conversely, we also try to get to know our patients better. Normally we see family members more often and we talk to them more extensively: what does your husband or wife like? What hobbies does your father or mother have and work? There is now almost no room for this. We actually know very little about them.
That is why we now consciously ask the family for more information. We write this down on a poster hanging in the IC room. We also affix all kinds of cards that patients receive.
We secretly hope they get something out of it.
They cannot read it themselves. Here they often lie in a deep, artificial coma. So what we do is read these cards. We secretly hope they get something out of it.
Dutch music
For that reason we also put on their favorite music when we care for the patient. Lately it has been mainly a lot of Dutch-language music. Even though I am not a fan of it at all; it does bring some atmosphere to the room. We don’t do it for ourselves, of course, but for the patient.
A while after patients have left the ICU and later also from the hospital, we speak to them during an aftercare conversation. Then we hear that people who have been in a coma do not remember the reading and the music. That is not surprising, when they are in a deep sleep because of all sleeping aids and medicines.
Sparkle
Yet we recommend family when they come to visit: talk like you always do. Because even if they don’t remember this, they might get a glimmer of it in their subconscious mind at the moment. “
Omroep Brabant will continue to follow Karin. This is the fifth part of a recurring section.
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