Name of health worker: Nankabirwa Lucy
Occupation: Nurse
Masaka Regional Referral Hospital
A health worker experience of feeling small when a COVID-19 patient claimed that all they wanted was to make money from the pandemic.
Managing COVID-19 patients or suspects taught me that I had to have a heart of serving and loving patients. Most of them were business owners who thought about their businesses all the time. It was quite difficult for these patients to accept that they were positive. Majority of the COVID-19 patients did not have difficulty in breathing. They used this an excuse to claim that they were negative of COVID-19, that we shouldn’t keep them for treatment.
I felt very small before a patient when she made a call to her relatives informing them that she was doing fine. She claimed that she had no problem at all, no pain and told them that it’s only health workers who want to make money from the President of Uganda, by informing him that they are positive for COVID-19.
Counselling is very essential in managing these patients and being empathetic towards them. There was a time that I went to the COVID-19 unit to administer drugs and food and a patient told me, “I will not swallow the medicine and your food.” I shared this challenge with the other health and social workers who were also working in the unit, and together we calmed down the patients.
There was no persistent challenge