A Mother's Day As We Have Never Known It
So, to celebrate mothers during this time when we are all self-isolating due to Covid 19, we thought we would talk to some mothers whose jobs are directly impacted by the unfathomable situation we find ourselves in, globally.
Georgie Holder - Nurse
Georgie is a Nurse Manager of a 30-bed ward within the Public Health Sector. She is a mum to 3 teenagers - Harry aged 13, Lucy aged 15 and Tom aged 18.
How has your role been affected by Covid 19?
Covid 19 is like nothing we have seen before and therefore the Public Health sector has been proactive in preparing for what we hope never happens. This has involved extensive education and advanced training for all nursing staff, to ensure our readiness for Covid19 patients. The one positive is a new sense of solidarity amongst my colleagues and the international nursing fraternity, with many of us joining Facebook groups to encourage and support one another. I have never seen such a global unity of my profession.
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Jacqueline Sansom - Teacher & Specialist Literary Coach
Jacqueline is a primary school teacher and mother of 2 boys aged 10 and 13.
How has your teaching role been affected by Covid 19?
The learning curve of being able to provide effective remote teaching has been huge. I am now teaching on line and making videos of myself teaching, which is really unnatural; as a teacher you are always looking out for immediate cues of students’ understandings or misunderstandings, always looking for teachable moments- which doesn’t occur in this artificial setting.
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Kate Credlin - Senior Speech Specialist
Kate is a Senior Speech Pathologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital working mainly in the Palliative Care Unit and the Head & Neck Cancer Service. She has three kids aged 10 , 8 and 5 as well as a miniature pony called Polly.
How has Covid 19 impacted your work and home life right now?
COVID has turned our family life on its head. When school closed in late March, we made the tough decision for my husband and kids to move to our farm in the Central Highlands of Victoria while I stay in Melbourne to work at the hospital. He is working full time as the head of investments for an accounting firm, while trying to home-school all three kids. He’s commented, more than once, that working in the volatile stock market is much easier than trying to wrangle three children to get their school work done!
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Dr. Holly Hutton - Kidney Specialist
Holly works as a Kidney Specialist as well as doing some general medicine/perioperative hospital work. She has a daughter called Maddie who is 18 months old.
How has your work been affected by Covid 19?
I am doing all of my usual clinics by telehealth, so lots of phone and videocalls, and I now do the calls from my study. The hospital work has actually been very quiet lately because of the shutdown of elective surgery, and because people are just not going to hospitals for non-essential reasons. Working from home, especially doing phone call consults from my study, with Maddie not in childcare anymore is tricky as there are no boundaries between work and home. A few times she has busted into the room and tried to join in a videocall.
Read moreI am so grateful and humbled by the work that our front-line workers are doing.
And a huge thank you to these women for sharing their thoughtful insights into this amazing time in our history.
Wishing you all a wonderful Mother’s Day. Hoping you can spend it with your loved ones, wherever you are.