Elspeth Annette

Elspeth Annette is in her 40s and lives in Scotland with her family and her cats. She has a bubbly character and clearly loves to make jokes.

Before the pandemic, Elspeth Annette worked as a nurse specialist, in a post that was linked to ICU in the hospital. Before that, she had worked in ICU. She described herself as being so thoroughly ICU, that “like a stick of rock, chop me in half and I’ve got it written through the middle of me,” but she had taken the offer of a career change to become a nurse specialist 10 years ago, based in the elective care department of the hospital. When Covid hit and elective surgery was de-prioritised, she felt that she needed to contribute to the ICU department where she felt most at home in her job, so she requested to temporarily re-train and re-join the department, a move that was welcomed by her former bosses.

Elspeth Annette was off sick when I interviewed her for the first time, she had finally gone abroad after Covid, and a few days into her holiday, she had fallen ill with intense food poisoning. She was laughing during the interview but told me it was not at all funny at the time. As a nurse, being taken to a rural hospital that was, as she described, ill-equipped and of poor quality in a foreign country, on her much-needed break had clearly been an ordeal. There was also a cruel irony in being so sick and dependent on others, on her first proper holiday since nursing so many people through the pandemic.

When discussing this research and the nature of her participation in it, she demonstrated a clear understanding of what kind of photography is permitted in a hospital as a result of her work in ICU, connecting this to the ways that photography was used to communicate and express some of the hardships felt by herself and her colleagues during the worst outbreaks of Covid-19.

As mentioned previously, she was offered the nurse specialist post that she has now around 10 years ago, except for the few years where she returned to ICU to support her old team during the pandemic. Elspeth Annette spoke in detail about one distressing event, which led her to want to change jobs. She was emotional and teary speaking about this, and it was clearly very visually present as a memory despite being many years ago. She explained that despite being newly back from maternity leave herself, she kept finding herself caring for patients with complex obstetric needs. The particular event that had stayed with her concerned a newly post-partum mother who had died after giving birth from un-survivable blood clots. She had successfully performed CPR on her once, but the woman died soon after and she was tasked with telling the partner and his family what had happened. Finding the shift (a night shift) a stressful one she went home and started scrolling through social media to take her mind off work. Unbeknownst to Elspeth Annette, the woman was from her local village, and so they had mutual friends on Facebook and she quickly saw everyone congratulating her for the birth and a photo of the woman smiling and holding her baby in her *** print dressing gown. Knowing that she had cut the dressing gown off of her a few hours earlier and knowing she was dead when no one else knew was too much for her. (when describing this moment she clarified that this is a feature of Facebook that has since been changed and we are less likely to see posts simply because they have been commented on by friends or friends of friends)   Elspeth Annette said that this particular moment was a turning point, and when she went into work the next day she said, “I'm done with this. I'm done with this. I'm dry. I can't do it anymore. I need to do something else.”

Elspeth Annette said she wasn’t sure if she was especially vulnerable as a result of recently giving birth herself, and whether that was why she noticed the impact of working with complicated obstetric cases more than usual, but she was soon offered the role she has now as a nurse specialist, which suits her mixture of experience as both a nurse and before that a PA.

What struck me about this encounter was the strength and impact of images in her memory. She told me: “I don't know why I went through the post I should have scrolled on by, but you know that's the thing you know, you have an image. This is all about images, and being dragged into an image.” The photo from Facebook had imprinted so firmly in her memory that she told me she still can’t stand to look at ***` print. “I think it was just the actual image. It was the *** print dressing gown. That's what it was. It was the *** print. And I can't stand anything *** print ever since I can't, anything *** print, I can't stand it. Because it just takes me back.” This visual detail made me conscious of a few things. The way the mind attaches a strong image to a strong emotion, and also the impact on staff of working and living in rural settings and the issues with confidentiality and proximity that may arise.