Guido Caironi

Guido is a nurse, he works in the operating room and hospital rescue vehicles.Guido is keen to focus attention on listening, an innate ability for many, but one that can also be learned over time."One must not only know how to do, but also know how to be and listen."For Guido, listening is not simply "hearing" but something more."The moment I listen to a person, I have to focus not only on words, but also on the unsaid".Sensibility that needs to be refined especially when the patient is not in front of you, but behind a telephone receiver."If a person tells me that he is breathing badly, I am certainly careful to catch what he says to me with verbal language, but at the same time I am very careful to catch the noises of breathing in the surrounding environment.The breath, the pauses, the silences, everything that we might not consider, becomes of extreme importance for a nurse. The ability to listen and technical skills, allow a first diagnosis of the patient, often save his life.In the Covid-19 period, when there were hundreds of phone calls to sort through, this was crucial."I remember being afraid." This is the first emotion that Guido describes to us at the advent of the epidemic.He, like many of us, has felt fear.Nurses find themselves in contact with life and death every day despite this, they are not used to pain, they are never really used to it.The unknown is what is most frightening in this period, the lack of knowledge of a virus that has forced the world to change, to protect itself.Guido, like many of his colleagues, found himself afraid of not being able to give an answer or a possible solution, to his patients, to all of us."The fear of taking home to me the burden of suffering of every person I listen to is a very big risk that we professionals cannot afford."Nurses live in contact with pain and illness, but in this period, sensations and emotions have amplified exponentially, forcing them to seek new equilibriums, in order to protect ourselves, to remain stable in a storm.It is necessary to separate the professional side from the emotional side, without losing one's humanity. It is a job of building on oneself, every day."I have never failed to thank the patients and family members who in turn thanked me. We had a bit of a race to thank those who thanked us the most".Guido stops, looks at us with a serious air and says: "I would like each of you to know that we nurses are there and will always be there. There is a lot of suffering in the world, but if there is a little less it is also thanks to us".Let's never forget that.