As the corona virus continues to rampage throughout the world and affect the workforce, some jobs continue on. One such example are workers in retirement or mental health care homes that deal with patients who struggle to adequately care for themselves on their own. 

While the job is almost always demanding, the pressure to take care of these patients is further increased with the added precautions everyone must take to avoid transmission. Furthermore, the professionals in these jobs place themselves at even higher risk since some of their jobs involve directly interacting with patients on a regular basis, and patients with preexisting issues are already more susceptible to contracting the virus and thus contaminating others.

Catherine Lee (20 y/o), one such worker, recounts her experiences with dealing with the patients despite the pandemic as “hectic”. She says “we have to reuse the masks and basically everything because there’s not enough to go around”. She also notes the difficulty of worrying about her own family’s safety while still providing for her patients. Catherine’s own mother struggles with back problems, causing Catherine to “constantly feel like I’m being pulled left and right”. She laments that while “of course I wanna take care of my patients – and I need to given it’s my job – they need me to since they struggle to take care of themselves”, she’s also constantly worried about unintentionally bringing it home – “I don’t want to transmit it to them after all”. 

Catherine is only one of many workers who continue to prevail and care for their patients in nursing homes despite the dangerous times. Hopefully with future developments and funding, nursing home workers will be able to continue to safely attend to their patients without the fear of the corona virus intervening with their care.