The Corona Virus has affected everyone in the world in many different ways, but what about the doctors and nurses that are dealing with it face to face everyday and how it impacted their lives in and outside of the hospital. Studies show that healthcare workers get covid the most and are 7 times more likely to get covid than any other occupation. When the pandemic first hit in March of 2020 there was a lot of uncertainty in the world and we all had to shut down, but the doctors and nurses couldn’t do their job from home and they would take the risk and come into the hospital with all the patients who tested positive.

Over the pandemic healthcare workers jobs have definitely become more stressful so I was curious how they felt about some things. My dad works at the hospital as Regional Communications Manager so I talked with him and asked him some questions about his job throughout Covid-19. When I asked him “How has your job changed throughout Covid-19, Has it become more stressful?” he said “Oh it’s definitely become more stressful, there are more urgent communication needs so for being communications manager overseeing 6 hospitals we have more requests from internal employees, stakeholders, leaders who need communication throughout covid and a lot more media requests on what is coming out of the hospital and how we are taking care of patients” and I wasn’t really surprised by his answer because like I said earlier there was a lot of uncertainty and there was a lot more need from people in the community to get information about what the hospital is doing about Covid compared to how it was before Covid. Covid brought a lot of stress and some fear into the hospital and a lot of changes on the way things are done now compared to then, “Well it changes everyday because we had too at the beginning turn many rooms in our hospitals that were not negative pressure rooms into negative pressure rooms so that sick people coming in and out of those rooms the air didn’t come out into the common areas and then we had to completely overhaul our visitor policy where we weren’t letting any people in, then we allowed a few when covid relaxed and now we are back to having a strict visitor policy because omicron is so transmissible”. Those changes that happen in the hospital can change what happens in the health care workers' lives. Healthcare workers’ lives can also be affected because they can get exposed to Covid almost everyday and the World Health Organization estimates that between 80,000 and 180,000 healthcare workers could have died from COVID-19 in the period between January 2020 to May 2021. I wondered what affects Covid-19 has had on my dad outside of his work, “Just being more adept at explaining what's going on in the hospital, how we’re treating patients with covid and the precautions we are taking as a hospital and how they can translate to what people do in their everyday life in terms of getting vaccinated, getting boosted, wearing their mask, doing proper hygiene, not gathering at the very beginning of covid. Going through covid at the hospital has impacted my approach to covid outside of the hospital”. I wondered if there were any benefits from being a healthcare work throughout the pandemic and I thought being able to get the vaccine before others but I couldn’t think of any others “I don’t know if there is too many benefits other than being able to work on your crisis conditions for a long extended period of time and build up a stamina and wherewithal to do that so that when covid becomes endemic that when the next crisis erupts there won’t be as much stress or adaptation into that new crisis because we have already gone through it”. Being able to control the next crisis is a benefit and is a change. Compared to other diseases and illnesses we will be able to confront the next crisis unlike ones in the past because of the change in healthcare resources, “Well there has been a better collaboration that I’ve seen between multiple different disciplines throughout the hospital to treat patients to create a care environment that cares for a very specific and very sick type of patient that comes in and that will help with our overall ability to care for different types of illness in the hospital, so someone like me who works in communications I’ve had the opportunity to work in close collaboration with executives, with infection prevention, with quality and security, with clinical leadership in the hospital in a very close and collaborative way that if a crisis like covid didn’t hit that may not of happened so what that will do in the future when there are other issues or other instances that come up where we’re having a crisis the relationships, the workflow, the ways in which we work together there will have already been a foundation made. So from my standpoint healthcare is becoming a more collaborative scenario and setting since Covid because people need to be working stronger together during the Covid crisis”.

Overall Covid-19 has had a major impact and change on healthcare workers jobs and out of work lives, because it increased their chances of getting sick and increased their stress level with their job. Healthcare workers throughout Covid have had one of the most important jobs and took risks daily just for their jobs to help other people.

Works Cited

“Health and Care Worker Deaths during COVID-19.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization,

https://www.who.int/news/item/20-10-2021-health-and-care-worker-deaths-during-covid-19