CAROL FRANCIS, PsyD
Hospital Healthcare Workers tackle horrific human conditions and dare to be efficient, professionally skilled, and compassionate even when they too are severely stressed, afraid, overworked and exposed to life-threatening diseases. Covid19’s 2020-2021 dumped challenges not ever seen before into USA Hospitals, catapulting Health Workers into extreme heroics, deep grief, shared suffering, and deplorable conditions.
How do we concretely support those who are assisting others facing death? How do we help minimize their Secondary Traumatic Stress, Compassion Fatigue and Burnout? I answered this question in five ways: send thousands of PPEs, gift copies of the book Recovery After Trauma Work for Healthcare Workers, provide comfort foods, freely offer online support classes and meditations through HealthWorkerSupport.com, and paint portraits as quickly as possible.
Then, December 2020, the second wave was overwhelmingly evident, and I saw Sky Art’s Portraitists paint British Health Workers and Steve Derrick’s Health Worker portraits shared on CNN, and I immediately began painting my healthcare friends and all their colleagues that requested portraits. Since December 26, 2020, I have had the inestimable privilege to paint over 200 portraits, looking into every wrinkle and masked grimace of these heroes faces. They inspire me daily. These ordinary humans who tackle impossible feats minute by minute deserve to feel appreciated, seen, and heard. In a sense, my art dabbles have evolved into a fervent extension of therapeutic intent to earnestly value, enjoy, and deeply SEE each person, ... now in ways that portraits alone offer.
Portraits for these amazing people seem to surpass all the other gifts shared. Each Health Worker explains how being truly SEEN and HEARD touches them deeper than all therapeutic tools and material gifts. These folks touch so many lives during very adverse circumstances; these heroes need to be touched with similar compassion and attentiveness.
Healthcare Worker Tree of Life Mosaic collects 175 hand painted portraits of Nurses, Doctors, EMTs, Technicians, Hospitalists, Security Guards, Morgue Caretakers, and Administrators. Displayed as a Tree of Life tribute, this collection of portraits reminds us that Covid19 threw millions of Health Workers into extreme battles fighting for our lives and our neighbors’ lives.
Healthcare Worker Tree of Life Mosaic
(Digital Collection of Watercolor, Ink, Acrylic and Procreate, 26” x 18”)
Stare into their eyes: Imagine travesties they have seen these years. Ponder their families’ worries. Acknowledge the deaths they’ve prevented. Consider the body bags they mournfully prepared. Hear the grievous weeping of their patients’ families via FaceTime. Sense hands held, tears wiped, bottoms cleaned, tubes inserted, last breaths rattled and shared.