Lee Jayoung

Las crónicas de una enfermera de la UCI durante Covid-19: El problema de la escasez

Como enfermera de la Unidad de Cuidados Intensivos de un importante hospital estatal de Seúl, me he enfrentado especialmente a problemas de escasez: falta de personal, de instalaciones y de equipos adecuados.
South Korea, Eastern Asia

Story by Lee Jayoung. Translated by Aobh Mc Anulty
Published on June 9, 2021.

This story is also available in GB it kr



La pandemia de Covid-19 ha provocado varios problemas en el sistema sanitario surcoreano. Como enfermera de la Unidad de Cuidados Intensivos (UCI) en un importante hospital estatal de Seúl, me he enfrentado especialmente a problemas de escasez: falta de personal, de instalaciones y de equipos adecuados.

En nuestro hospital, el problema más grave ha sido la falta de personal médico, ya que el número de pacientes que requieren cuidados intensivos aumentó repentinamente. Desde el año pasado, nuestro hospital ha intentado pensar en formas de resolver este problema. Decidió que, en lugar de contratar nuevas enfermeras, se trasladarían a nuestra sala las enfermeras de la Sala General (SG). Esto significaba que mis compañeros de la UCI y yo formaríamos a los nuevos traslados para que pudieran trabajar en la UCI. 

La UCI es bastante diferente de otras salas. Entre otras cosas, trabajamos con ventiladores y máquinas OMEC [1], y nuestros pacientes requieren una monitorización constante. Los pacientes que están en la sala de la UCI se enfrentan a una incertidumbre mucho mayor que en otros departamentos. Estos son grandes cambios que las enfermeras de la SG tienen que aprender a manejar y les resultaba difícil adaptarse. Las enfermeras veteranas de la UCI, como yo, no sólo teníamos que cuidar de los pacientes -incluidos los que dependían totalmente de las máquinas de mantenimiento de la vida-, sino que también teníamos la responsabilidad adicional de formar a las enfermeras de la SG. En conclusión, ambas partes tuvieron que lidiar con enormes cantidades de estrés, lo que suscitó quejas e hizo que el ambiente de trabajo se deteriorara.

En cuanto al problema de las instalaciones y los equipos, cuando Covid-19 llegó a Seúl, una gran metrópolis abarrotada con cerca de 10 millones de habitantes, el número de pacientes aumentó exponencialmente y no fue posible aceptarlos a todos en los hospitales.

Las enfermeras senior de la UCI, como yo, no sólo teníamos que atender a los pacientes (...) sino que además se nos encomendaba la responsabilidad adicional de formar a las enfermeras de la SG.

Incluso en tiempos normales, los hospitales de Seúl tienen muchos pacientes y luchan por acomodarlos a todos. Antes de Covid-19, cuando un hospital no podía aceptar más pacientes, se les trasladaba en una ambulancia a otro hospital. Pero en el caso de los pacientes de Covid-19, cuando hay que trasladarlos, el hospital no puede utilizar ambulancias normales, porque carecen de equipos adecuados, como ventiladores y tubos de intubación. Se necesitan ambulancias especiales para pacientes de la UCI, pero no hay muchas disponibles. De hecho, sólo hay un coche ambulancia en todo Seúl totalmente equipado para transportar pacientes de la UCI. Por suerte, el Hospital Nacional de Seúl ha implantado desde 2015 un nuevo sistema llamado SMICU [2] que mejora un poco la situación en la capital. En el lado negativo, estas ambulancias no pueden ir a otras zonas de Corea, donde el virus también ha hecho estragos. 

Además, los hospitales han tenido que crear nuevas instalaciones para acoger a los pacientes de Covid-19 que llegan. Sin embargo, no todos los hospitales pueden construir instalaciones separadas. Por ejemplo, en mi hospital, hay dos edificios principales: un edificio utiliza un sistema de ventilación para todo el edificio, y el segundo edificio tiene un sistema de calefacción, ventilación y aire acondicionado separado instalado en cada planta. Sólo se puede utilizar el segundo edificio para admitir a los pacientes de Covid-19, ya que el coronavirus se transmite por el aire y existe el peligro de que el sistema de ventilación haga circular el aire infectado por el hospital.

En las noticias, a menudo oímos que debido a epidemias anteriores como el SARS (en 2004) y el MERS (en 2012), Corea estaba mucho más preparada para una nueva pandemia que otros países. En realidad, no lo estábamos, y nada podría haber preparado a Corea para una pandemia de esta magnitud.


[1] OMEC: Oxigenación por membrana extracorpórea: método de soporte vital utilizado para oxigenar la sangre en pacientes con insuficiencia pulmonar, mediante una máquina que incorpora membranas impermeables a la sangre, pero permeables al oxígeno y al dióxido de carbono.

[2] La Unidad Móvil de Cuidados Intensivos de Seúl (SMICU) es un servicio de transporte público para pacientes de urgencia con enfermedades graves.


How does this story make you feel?

Follow-up

Do you have any questions after reading this story? Do you want to follow-up on what you've just read? Get in touch with our team to learn more! Send an email to
[email protected].

Talk about this Story

Please enable cookies to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Share your story

Every story we share is another perspective on a complex topic like migration, gender and sexuality or liberation. We believe that these personal stories are important to better understand what's going on in our globalised society - and to better understand each other. That's because we are convinced that the more we understand about each other, the easier it will be for us to really talk to one another, to get closer - and to maybe find solutions for the issues that affect us all. 

Do you want to share your story? Then have a look here for more info.

Share Your Story

Subscribe to our Monthly Newsletter

Stay up to date with new stories on Correspondents of the World by subscribing to our monthly newsletter:

* indicates required

Follow us on Social Media

Lee Jayoung

Lee Jayoung

Jayoung is a nurse from Seoul, South Korea. She is very passionate about her job and worked in a Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) for 5 years. Since 2020, she has been working in a Covid-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in a large Seoul hospital.

Other Stories in Español




Show all

Get involved

At Correspondents of the World, we want to contribute to a better understanding of one another in a world that seems to get smaller by the day - but somehow neglects to bring people closer together as well. We think that one of the most frequent reasons for misunderstanding and unnecessarily heated debates is that we don't really understand how each of us is affected differently by global issues.

Our aim is to change that with every personal story we share.

Share Your Story

Community Worldwide

Correspondents of the World is not just this website, but also a great community of people from all over the world. While face-to-face meetings are difficult at the moment, our Facebook Community Group is THE place to be to meet other people invested in Correspondents of the World. We are currently running a series of online-tea talks to get to know each other better.

Join Our Community

EXPLORE TOPIC Coronavirus

Global Issues Through Local Eyes

We are Correspondents of the World, an online platform where people from all over the world share their personal stories in relation to global development. We try to collect stories from people of all ages and genders, people with different social and religious backgrounds and people with all kinds of political opinions in order to get a fuller picture of what is going on behind the big news.

Our Correspondents

At Correspondents of the World we invite everyone to share their own story. This means we don't have professional writers or skilled interviewers. We believe that this approach offers a whole new perspective on topics we normally only read about in the news - if at all. If you would like to share your story, you can find more info here.

Share Your Story

Our Editors

We acknowledge that the stories we collect will necessarily be biased. But so is news. Believing in the power of the narrative, our growing team of awesome editors helps correspondents to make sure that their story is strictly about their personal experience - and let that speak for itself.

Become an Editor

Vision

At Correspondents of the World, we want to contribute to a better understanding of one another in a world that seems to get smaller by the day - but somehow neglects to bring people closer together as well. We think that one of the most frequent reasons for misunderstanding and unnecessarily heated debates is that we don't really understand how each of us is affected differently by global issues.

Our aim is to change that with every personal story we share.

View Our Full Vision & Mission Statement

Topics

We believe in quality over quantity. To give ourselves a focus, we started out to collect personal stories that relate to our correspondents' experiences with six different global topics. However, these topics were selected to increase the likelihood that the stories of different correspondents will cover the same issues and therefore illuminate these issues from different perspectives - and not to exclude any stories. If you have a personal story relating to a global issue that's not covered by our topics, please still reach out to us! We definitely have some blind spots and are happy to revise our focus and introduce new topics at any point in time. 

Environment

Discussions about the environment often center on grim, impersonal figures. Among the numbers and warnings, it is easy to forget that all of these statistics actually also affect us - in very different ways. We believe that in order to understand the immensity of environmental topics and global climate change, we need the personal stories of our correspondents.

Gender and Sexuality

Gender is the assumption of a "normal". Unmet expectations of what is normal are a world-wide cause for violence. We hope that the stories of our correspondents will help us to better understand the effects of global developments related to gender and sexuality, and to reveal outdated concepts that have been reinforced for centuries.

Migration

Our correspondents write about migration because it is a deeply personal topic that is often dehumanized. People quickly become foreigners, refugees - a "they". But: we have always been migrating, and we always will. For millions of different reasons. By sharing personal stories about migration, we hope to re-humanize this global topic.

Liberation

We want to support the demand for justice by spotlighting the personal stories of people who seek liberation in all its different forms. Our correspondents share their individual experiences in creating equality. We hope that for some this will be an encouragement to continue their own struggle against inequality and oppression - and for some an encouragement to get involved.

Education

Education is the newest addition to our themes. We believe that education, not only formal but also informal, is one of the core aspects of just and equal society as well as social change. Our correspondents share their experiences and confrontations about educational inequalities, accessibility issues and influence of societal norms and structures. 

Corona Virus

2020 is a year different from others before - not least because of the Corona pandemic. The worldwide spread of a highly contagious virus is something that affects all of us in very different ways. To get a better picture of how the pandemic's plethora of explicit and implicit consequences influences our everyday life, we share lockdown stories from correspondents all over the world.

Growing Fast

Although we started just over a year ago, Correspondents of the World has a quickly growing community of correspondents - and a dedicated team of editors, translators and country managers.

94

Correspondents

113

Stories

57

Countries

433

Translations

Contact

Correspondents of the World is as much a community as an online platform. Please feel free to contact us for whatever reason!

Message Us

Message on WhatsApp

Call Us

Joost: +31 6 30273938