COVID recovery

As international vaccination programmes reach more people and largely COVID-19 numbers begin to reduce, organisationally, many of us are now once again seeing and using terms such as ‘Covid recovery’.

The Covid recovery we ought to be discussing at length, though, is not our business continuity plans, nor our return to business-as-usual plans—but rather, our own personal journeys to recovery. Historically, as rare as a global pandemic is, it is no rarer than paramedics worldwide, actually answering the questions honestly: ‘Are you okay, how are things?’…myself included.

Covid, for all its tragic consequences, has again given space to an important conversation about our personal and professional wellbeing, resilience, and response to overwhelmingly challenging emotional labour, from paramedic to director.

Recently, in a meeting of professionals, we were asked: ‘Are you okay, how are things?’ Very few, if any at all, spoke up, but rather stayed silent…myself included. Not even positive answers were offered—just silence behind turned off cameras. People—myself included—hiding behind and proffering running jokes such as ‘Oh we don't ask that question here’ or ‘We don't want to break anyone by honestly asking that do we?’