“I, with a team of five other healthcare personnel, work together in an on-field COVID team where we have to go from house to house checking people for symptoms of COVID in a containment zone. While some people treat us as carriers of virus and misbehave with us, families that are scared of the police personnel with us, invite us with scared eyes and heart-breaking stories. 

 I belong to a lower-class family myself, and when we go to a house similar to mine, I feel this sting that goes right through my heart when I see their living conditions. They don’t have the means to medicate themselves properly and few will suffer a physical ailment and just sit in their houses bearing the pain. At such times I think to myself, what if someone from my house has to face a similar situation?” said Ketaki, a 24-year-old volunteer working with the Ministry of Health.  

 Ketaki is a victim of compassion fatigue to a large extent—sometimes with such far reaching consequences that her moral support for a patient and his family made her feel it was all her fault. She further explained her story, “There is this uncle, a watchman who was admitted with COVID symptoms. He was sent home after the first test and asked to self-quarantine till the results came. I visited their house during my rounds but what I saw there left me shattered.

 I couldn’t see uncle’s condition as he lay on the bed with his two daughters, 9 and 7 years old, sobbing while clinging to their mother, who barely has the ability to earn anything. I wanted to help them in some way so I gave them a few medicines and said I’ll come back later. I also extended all my moral support...told the family that it’s going to be fine given his age and the fact that he didn’t have any health complication.

I frequently went around to their room after my rounds to drop in and reassure them that all will be fine since I am myself involved in their take care. But what started as me extending morale support spiralled into an emotional roller coaster for me. A few night ago as I lay in my bed, I couldn’t sleep. The uncle’s face kept flashing in front of me. I dreamt that he was suffering and his face morphed into my father’s now. It was the worst nightmare that I’ve ever had. How could I let him die when I could literally see my father lying there?

 I was hounded by the family. I wanted to support them morally so I visited them daily. The girls have grown fond of me and the aunty calls me an angel. I don’t know whether I am doing the right thing? Aunty cries in front of me talking about her worry for the husband and girls, the girls think of me as their older sister, the uncle cried in front of me with the fear of dying. Honestly, more than the fear of his dying, I am concerned that if something happens to this man, I am going to have a nervous breakdown, I’ve invested myself so much in this family.”

Our frontline workers are as much human as any of us and for them the dilemma of keeping their emotions and their jobs separate is becoming hard. Families of patients or potential patients are scared and look at these workers as their saviour angels. From being a healthcare worker, soon the family starts believing and accepting that it is only these people who will save them.

Thereby making it imperative that all frontline personnel, healthcare workers know how to keep the fine  line between emotional involvement and doing their jobs, defined and clear.

 Ketaki adds, "Have I come too far while giving moral support to a patient as a healthcare worker? I am so deep in their trouble and my own problems I am not able to see a way out of this. Rather, every time I don’t go to see them or avoid them it feels like I am responsible for the way they feel… It is all because of me… It is my fault…”