They left the care, but Corona brought them back. “Is it sensible, Henk?”

Due to the corona crisis, there is something unique going on in the health care sector: approximately twenty thousand (former) care workers have already indicated that they want to help out now that the pressure on hospitals is extra high. The government desk for Extrahandsvoordezorg reports that it links these people to places where help is needed. Some of the people who report are retired or switched jobs earlier. Others are still working as health care workers, but now want to help in areas more severely affected by the coronavirus outbreak.

Almost three hundred care organizations have already requested support at the counter. In total for nearly four thousand full-time jobs.

Also read this story of IC doctors in Assen and Amsterdam: “Most people think: someone will solve it”

Nurses and doctors can also get back to work, provided they still have a valid BIG registration. The government has expanded that policy, so that nurses whose BIG had expired after 1 January can now get back to work.

Three former care workers who return to their old hospitals after months, sometimes even years, explain why they do this.

Henk Feijs (66 years), works again in the Zuyderland Hospital in Heerlen

“Is it wise, Henk?” Most colleagues reacted happily when Feijs was back in front of them. But some raised their eyebrows anxiously. Start working in a corona war zone at his age?

Feijs himself also had doubts. “Damn it, should I do it?” He had seen the influx of corona patients swell in the Limburg hospital. The intensive care unit where he had worked for forty years was filling up. A second IC department has already been set up. He knew how nice it is to have extra hands when it is busy.

Last June was his last working day. That morning he had just gone to work – his family picked him up during the morning. First “coffee, tea, custard” [vlaai]. In the evening a party with one hundred and ten guests. “Unforgettable,” said Feijs.

On his very first working day in intensive care, he was only 24 years old. At that time, the hospital was still called the De Wever Hospital. Intensive care was an interesting place, because “all the diseases you can imagine” pass by there.

What has always fascinated him is how bodies react so differently to ailment. Some people only catch a cold from the coronavirus, others die. How is that possible, Feijs thinks. The same was true for the flu. “I’ve seen plenty of people die from something basic, such as appendicitis.”

Ventilating people, that was what Feijs did forty-two years ago, but at the time it was still a special feature. The device at the time had a hose that Feijs had to push himself into water to get the right pressure. Now the machines understand how much pressure it takes to get enough air into a patient’s lungs.

It is far from the first time that Feijs is confronted with a new disease. For example, there were young children with the meningococcal bacteria years ago. He also remembers AIDS patients well, at that time he had to be careful not to prick his own fingers with syringes. Q fever also played in his region. And now for the corona virus. “I have never experienced that in my life: such an influx, in a time of nothing.”

Patients with the virus are “very sick people,” he sees. “Sometimes they come in talking, a few hours later they lie on their stomach, on a respirator, dead and deadly sick.”

After returning to work, another doctor in the intensive care unit fell ill. He made the right choice, Feijs thought then.

He explains to colleagues that he has come under certain conditions. He works three days a week. “It must be safe. If there is no protective clothing, it ends for me. ”

Fortunately, he is healthy. He exercises regularly, cycles, “is short on time”. No, he couldn’t have discovered the black hole after his retirement. He immediately threw himself into the catering business he has with his wife. Cooking, serving – at weddings, staff parties, communions.

It was a strange feeling to put on his white coat again last week. “If you had told me last year: you will be back in the hospital in a few months, I would have said: you are crazy. Nobody could have foreseen this. ”

Marissa Meulstee (32 years old), works again at the UMC Utrecht

A hospital series on Net5 gave Marissa Meulstee the idea of ​​becoming a nurse. She was nineteen when she graduated as a nurse. Meulstee joined the head and neck oncology department at UMC Utrecht. She thought it was fantastic, but also intense. She calls it a “crash course growing up.” Tumors in the maxillary sinuses, throat, nose. Very drastic operations. She worked in the department for a total of eight years, with an intermediate step as a district nurse.

After Meulstee gave birth to twins, the irregular hours cut in. She and her husband sought more structure for the young family. Friends were starting a catering business in her home town of Harderwijk. Meulstee brainstormed with them on the terrace. Why didn’t she join the company, they asked. At first Meulstee laughed it away: quitting her good job at UMC Utrecht? But the idea kept gnawing.

She is now co-owner and certified barista. In the “nice cozy lunchroom” they have, she threw herself into coffee. For inspiration she traveled the country to taste coffee in bars. “In our case I also take care of people, but in very different circumstances.”

“Jemig, what forms will this take,” Meulstee thought when Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced in a press conference that people should work from home whenever possible. In Spain, the catering industry was already closed, the same threatened for the Netherlands. Meulstee had been out of care for three years, but something started to itch again.

At the same time, there were also doubts. Was she still able to do it, is it safe to start again after years? The personnel and organization department eventually placed her in the medium care department, a nursing department for patients with and without corona. During the first shift it was again as before. She dialed the reception number without thinking about it. “It just went. Very strange.”

She is now supervised by another nurse. She meets former colleagues in the hallway. “Thank you for doing this,” they say to her.

In her protective clothing at the bedside of a Covid-19 patient, Meulstee feels safer than in the supermarket. The infection risk does not impress her that much. The loneliness of patients. How some people die alone. And how an old couple is put together so that they are together for the last hours.

She does this work as long as her catering business is closed. Then she looks at whether she can keep another shift during the week. “Then I’ll see how it is here.”

Wim Togni (64 years old), works at the OLVG in Amsterdam again

Wim Togni still had the email address of his old manager. He presented himself at eight o’clock Monday evening, March 23. An answer came at nine o’clock. On Tuesday, a pass and a zero-hour contract for six months were available. On Wednesday he was back in the Amsterdam OLVG department, where he had worked for 34 years.

After his early retirement, Togni had moved from the North Holland Landsmeer to the village of Doorwerth near Arnhem. At the local castle he did volunteer work behind the cash register. He wanted to do something completely unrelated to health care. The people who come to the castle are on an outing, he says. Nobody goes to the hospital for fun.

On television, Togni had watched the intensive care units fill up. “Then it will be the turn of the OLVG,” he thought. Actually, he did not think about his own risk of infection. He was already in danger: his wife also works in the hospital. The couple stays away from their daughter-in-law, who is twelve weeks pregnant. Until the crisis is over.

Togni had been away for two years, but soon returned to the department as if it had never been otherwise. He still knew most people. New employees knew him by name. This was because Togni had a dual role in the hospital before his departure. He checked the equipment of the IC department. In the years after his departure, the room in which he did so was still called “Wim’s loft”.

Now his knowledge of the various new respirators comes in handy. First there were 24 beds in the ICU, now 59. They even got eight devices from the army.

Togni was already familiar with other infectious diseases of the past in a ‘moon suit’. But with corona it is more intensive, patient room after patient room. It is hot in the suit and he gets stretch marks on his face. Nothing can be done about it, it is no different.

Corona makes an impression, but it is not the most violent he has ever experienced in the department. That was that early New Year’s morning of 2001, after the Volendam disaster. He had happily gone to bed in a party mood and was back in the department at three in the morning. One burnt teenager after another was driven in. But unlike with Corona, peace was back after a day or two or three.

Togni now gets up at half past five four days a week. At six o’clock he drives to Amsterdam. He returns home twelve hours later. He will stay, he thinks, as long as it is necessary. “I’ve been through it now. Then I want to finish it too. ”

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