Dorte

Age at interview: 55

Brief Outline:

Gender: Female
Ethnicity: White European - Danish
Background: Dorte is 55 years old and Danish. She is married and works as a care home manager. Dorte, a care home manager, found it stressful when Covid entered her care home. She says that she was worried about the residents.

 

More about me...

Dorte first heard about Covid around November 2019. She did not think much about it at first. However, everyone around her was in panic. Dorte was sent information from her employer about how to cope with Covid. She says this time was very hard because she had to keep employees informed and stay up to date with policies which were changing all the time. Dorte and her husband decided to take extra measures to protect themselves before mask mandates came in. They would wear masks and gloves indoors and socially distanced.  
 
Unfortunately, a new resident bought Covid into her care home (despite being quarantined). Dorte described this as a very stressful time as the resident was severely ill, other residents were at risk, and some of her staff did not want to work. Dorte also felt emotionally drained because she had to try to keep people with dementia in their bedrooms. As she explained, “you just want to do the best for residents.” 
 
In December 2020, Dorte became quite run-down. At first she thought it was because she had been working a lot of hours and had much emotional stress. However, she decided it was best to take a Covid test. The test came back positive and so did her husband’s. Dorte remembers thinking, “how do we get food into the house? How do we survive? We have a dog so how do we walk the dog? How do we manage this?” 
 
Dorte isolated for ten days and then went back to work. However, she felt severe emotional distress. She explained that her mother-in-law was in hospital and her husband was still severely ill with Covid. So, she had another few days off work. What helped her recover was seeing her mother-in-law on a video-call.  

Dorte said her role as a care home manager is better now than in the first year of the pandemic.

I guess we all feel a lot more positive in the way we can handle the future and the way that it’s been handled to now in that home. So, I’ve been there, as I say, from January until now and we regularly give, go through the PPE, the infection control competencies. We update. We talk about in all of our meetings and, in general, I think people are just so much more positive about how we can work with it and also, we’ve all had our vaccinations. Residents first and then us, the staff as well at the same time.

Dorte’s mother-in-law moved in, and she worried about bringing Covid home from her job as a care home manager.

But, in that time, Covid set aside and everything else, my mother-in-law then we had loads of phone calls from the hospital. They needed to and wanted to discharge her, despite her being really poorly. She lives on her own so she couldn’t go back to her own place. They were going to send her back to her own house and we said, “Well, you know, you can’t do that. She can’t look after herself and she’ll end back up in hospital.” So, she came to stay with us, and she stayed with us for a month and, again, from my personal experience, she was very poorly still when she came to stay with us. We were very concerned all of us, of course, still passing Covid onto her, me still going into work and yeah, it was a tough time.

Dorte, a care home manager, recalls when she believes she caught Covid at work

I myself, was one of the people that went around definitely wearing my mask, apron, gloves, cleaning, I did everything that was within my power to [er] minimise the spread but I went into one of the residents that hadn’t, at that stage, been tested positive and I was stood in the doorway. I believe that’s how I caught it because she coughed. She didn’t hold herself, you know, even with her hand in front of her mouth and I, the only way I can think that I would have picked it up was by the droplets that came from her coughing.

Dorte felt embarrassed to tell people at first but received very empathetic and understanding responses.

Initially, I was hugely embarrassed. I didn’t want to tell people. I thought, it’s a dirty word and it’s not one to be bandied about. And then actually I changed my mind about it because the reception I had from those people that I did tell was, you know, one of full empathy, sympathy and understanding. I think maybe because of the way I got it or I felt I got it.

Dorte asked herself ‘how do we get food into the house?’ when she found out that she had to isolate.

It’s only us two in the house and we don’t normally have home deliveries of any kind. So all of a sudden, it’s okay, how do we get food into the house? How do we survive? We have a dog so how do we walk the dog? [laughs]. It was all of those kind of questions that we thought, oh dear. How do we manage this?