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  • Bearing witness poetically in a pandemic: documenting suffering and care in conditions of physical isolation and uncertainty

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Original research
Bearing witness poetically in a pandemic: documenting suffering and care in conditions of physical isolation and uncertainty
  1. Katherine Boydell1,
  2. Deborah Lupton2
  1. 1 Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  2. 2 UNSW, Kensington, New South Wales, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Professor Katherine Boydell, Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, 2034, Australia; K.boydell{at}unsw.edu.au

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis is still affecting millions of people worldwide. However, government and mass media attention to the continuing loss of life, severe illness and prolonged effects of COVID-19 has subsided, rendering the suffering of those who have become ill or disabled, or who have lost loved ones to the disease, largely hidden from view. In this article, we employ autoethnographic poetic inquiry from the perspective of a mother/carer whose young adult daughter became critically ill and hospitalised after becoming infected while the mother herself was isolating at home due to her own COVID-19 diagnosis. The first author created a poem from notes she had made in a journal from telephone conversations and messages with the healthcare providers caring for her daughter. The second author responded to the poem, identifying the feelings and meanings it surfaced. Together, the authors draw on scholarship discussing concepts of uncertainty, liminality, moral distress, bearing witness and illness narratives to reflect on how autoethnographic poetic inquiry can document and make visible COVID-19-related suffering.

  • COVID-19
  • poetry
  • medical humanities

Data availability statement

Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study.

https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2023-012768

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    Data availability statement

    Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study.

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter @KBoydell, @DALupton

    • Correction notice This article has been corrected since it was published Online First. Citations that were anonymised for peer review have been added to the main text.

    • Contributors KB was responsible for the overall content as the guarantor, conceived of the paper and drafted the first version. DB also made substantial contributions to reflections on the work; and revising it critically for important intellectual content; both have provided final approval of the version to be published.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.