01 October 2021
n each issue of the Journal of Community Nursing, we investigate a topic currently affecting our readers. Here, Kate Upton, representative for Nursing Professions on the Crisis, Disaster and Trauma Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, looks at "Recognising compassion fatigue and protecting wellbeing".
Since the first patient in the UK was diagnosed with Covid-19 on the 31st January 2020, the last 18 months have been unlike any we have experienced in our lifetime. The impact of the pandemic has been dramatic, turning our lives upside down and changing them beyond recognition — and not least for community nurses, like yourselves.
With the presence of Covid-19, community nurses not only had to deal with pre-existing concerns (many of which have been exasperated by the virus), but also with new challenges and pressures. Having to battle a shared enemy that appears to thrive on hiding in plain sight, many of you will have been thrust into having to operate outside of your comfort zone and in environments where you may have felt a loss of control.You will have experienced a huge shift in the way you carry out your work, having been pushed into being more open- minded and creative in managing workloads, as well as having to rapidly adapt to ever evolving new ways of providing patient care. For some, you may also have been redeployed to roles where you have needed to make use of new or rarely used skills. And, of course, underlying all of this, there is the understandable additional concern of contracting the virus and passing it on to others.
