Clinical reports and policy documents describe conditions in technical terms. Poetry and narrative writing can illuminate aspects of illness that formal language often struggles to convey — uncertainty, fluctuating capacity, and the everyday adjustments required to continue living and working. The following poem by Dennis, a healthcare worker with Long Covid was written to reflect the experience of colleagues within the healthcare workforce.
Colleagues
Some of the names on these lists once stood beside you at the nurses’ station or the end of the ward.
They knew the same routines: handover medication rounds the real work of care.
Now their days are measured differently: breath spoons pace points pause to pause.
Long Covid entered the hospital not only through its doors but in the lives of those who worked here.
Some remain in the wards and corridors.
Others no longer can.
More than 1 in 10 of 1,496 US healthcare personnel reported the same moderate or severe symptom at both three and six months after COVID-19. Read the findings, limitations and what they may mean for SHH-UK readers.
Join SHH-UK’s online support groups for healthcare workers with Long Covid this October and November. Connect, chat and share with others.
A large US study of almost 2,000 children and adolescents found that those meeting the research threshold for probable Long COVID were more likely to experience difficulties with grades, attention and participation with friends.
