In cooperation with the Turkish Society of Medical Surgical Intensive Care and Nobel Pharmaceuticals, the pandemic memoirs will be archived in order to analyze the experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic for both today’s people and evaluate today’s conditions for future generations with the project of “Pandemic Memoirs”
Assoc. Dr. Melda Türkoğlu, President of the Turkish Society of Medical Surgical Intensive Care and Hakan Şahin, General Manager, Nobel Pharmaceuticals, detailed the project with an online press conference.
“Pandemic Memories” (in Turkish: Pandemi Anıları) is an important archive book project which will leave a mark in history
Stating that the virus, which covers almost every corner of the world, leaves deep marks on the lives of health professionals, Hakan Şahin, General Manager, Nobel Pharmaceuticals gave information about the scope of the project following:
“After Covidien-19 outbreak, which entered our lives in 2020, impacting all over the world, bringing the social and economic life to standstill, made many radical changes in our life style, our ways of doing business, our training activities. The only one constant truth in the whole world on such a rooted scale is undeniable effort and sacrifice of the health professionals. All of them worked wholeheartedly for public health in the fight against the epidemic. We sadly followed the stories of many healthcare professionals who fell ill or even died in the fight against the virus.
As the Nobel Family, which believes in ‘Everything is worth it for health’, we want to hear and announce the feelings, fears, concerns and hopes that this virus, which has surrounded almost every corner of the world, has left traces in the lives of healthcare professionals.
With this sensitivity, the “Pandemic Memories” project, which we have implemented together with the Turkish Society of Medical Surgical Intensive Care, will enable us to witness the events experienced in this difficult process and will be an archive that will be left to the future. Pandemic Memories; Today, it is an important archive book project that will convey what happened in this period to future generations and leave a mark on the history, as it is a thank you project for all healthcare professionals who fought devotedly on the front line, especially in hospitals, polyclinics, family health centers and pharmacies. In the project, we sincerely wish to hear and announce the feelings of not only healthcare professionals, but also all of our people, who have been very affected by this process. Therefore, we invite all our people, especially our healthcare professionals, who are the most important heroes of this process, to be the author of this book.
With the pandemic process, the importance of digitalization in our lives has increased even more. Therefore; We have created an archive portal where we will collect the visual, auditory and written notes, experiences and memories of our healthcare professionals in the digital environment: www.pandemianilari.org. To this portal; All visitors will be able to upload photos, videos and articles.
As Nobel Pharmaceuticals Family, I would like to thank you once again to the Turkish Society of Internal and Surgical Sciences Intensive Care, which is at the forefront of the struggle, with whom we acted together for the realization of this project, and who closely experience and feel the pandemic process.”
President of the Turkish Internal and Surgical Sciences Intensive Care Association Assoc. Dr. Melda Türkoğlu summarized what happened from the health professionals window in her speech: “I would like to start by conveying my gratitude to the Nobel Family for carrying out such a meaningful project on behalf of the Turkish Society of Internal and Surgical Intensive Care Medicine and its board of directors and giving us the opportunity to take part as stakeholders.
Starting in December 2019 in ‘China’s Wuhan city, spreading Turkey as of March 2020, the epidemic spread all over the world biggest small, men and women, were deeply affected the lives of everyone. While our elders lived like a prisoner in their own home for days, our young people learned to learn from the computer screen and our little children to play games by wearing masks. However, we, as healthcare professionals, went through different and complex emotional situations and had different experiences.
What did we feel?
We were afraid… But first of all, we were afraid not of wanting the virus, of not being able to grow up, then we were afraid of our relatives. We were afraid of harming our mother, father, spouse and children while performing our professions. And we were afraid of our own lives as much as our colleagues who lost their lives in this cause.
We longed … We stayed away from them for days in order not to harm our relatives, spouses, children and parents, and still hundreds of healthcare professionals continue to serve with the longing they live away from their families.
We panic… The fact that this virus is new, its protection from its spread, its diagnosis and its treatment is new and untested, has made us into a terrible panic in obtaining information. Every day new information, a new article, messages shared on social media… We drowned in a horrible literature. Which of these was true, which we needed to implement our patients, how to be preserved two, which would wear masks etc. We had to evaluate them among all these works and choose the right one.
We were sorry… We saw many deaths, some of them at a young age, we witnessed different stories. It is not possible for me to describe the feeling I feel when a patient with severe difficulty in breathing, whom I went to evaluate to admit a patient to intensive care, told me that I came from intensive care, when he asked me about his wife in intensive care without thinking about himself or when a girl, who lost her father while her parents being treated in hospital for COVID-19, said me “Please let my mom live at least”
What has changed in our lives?
We worked very hard in our working life, we got very tired. We had to do two-fold work in the same hours, on the one hand Covidien-19 when dealing with patient groups on the one hand Covidien-19 non-hi subordinates are kept.
There were also difficulties we had to endure during the work. It was very difficult to work with masks that prevent you from even breathing, glasses that prevent you from seeing, overalls that prevent you from moving, and gloves that prevent you from touching. Everything has changed, our habits and working order, our colleagues. We had to work with different healthcare professionals from different disciplines in hospitals’ different epidemic planning. People who were not used to each other had to adapt in a short time and form a team. We got nervous from time to time, but then we learned to set aside our habits and work with the existing team with tolerance.
During this process, an Einstein emerged from all of us. Inadequate healthcare equipment was one of our biggest concerns. For this reason, each of us has almost become an inventor in this regard… We tried to create the equipment that would be useful for us with the materials we have, we shared what we did with each other, we enjoyed it very much…
We are in the middle of the pandemic right now. Now we have adapted more to both the process and the work. We want to get through this period as soon as possible and get back to our old days. We have witnessed this epidemic that can be seen every 100 years in the medical world. However, it should have been our biggest duty to transfer our experiences, experiences and feelings to the next generations. At this point, we got acquainted with the “Pandemic Memories” project proposed by the Nobel family. We believe that “Pandemic Memories” will be a great resource that will shed light on the future. This project will be the name of a great service to be provided in the field of medicine by ensuring the transfer of our experience to the advanced generations. For this reason, we care about this and invite all our members and all healthcare professionals to share their visual, audio and textual stories. This book will be the greatest work to be created by us and transferred to future generations. I would like to express our sincere thanks and gratitude to the Nobel Family for their unconditional support in the generation of the book.
