Thursday, April 2

We have now had a state of emergency at the health station for 3 weeks. I am glad that the Directorate of Health came up with new guidelines for how we will work during this period. Usually we have 15 regular contacts with children before they start school. They are followed up with vaccinations, weight, nutrition, motor development and the environment in which they grow up. Now it has been reduced to only vaccinations and follow-up of newborns after they come home from the hospital. That is, now there are 5 regular contacts to be followed up. We will also follow up families who have extra challenges.

We work in such a way that some days we are at home with a home office to minimize infection in the work environment. Then the others are on duty and take care of the consultations at the health center. This is just the beginning and I have to be willing to work in other places such as nursing homes or other institutions in the municipality if needed. Some of my colleagues are on the information phone for the population in the municipality – the so-called "Coronaphone", and they work with infection tracing.

Our professional group has had the opportunity to strengthen our original role as prevention and infection control workers during this period. Public health nurses – before Public Health Nurses, have worked with infection control and vaccination work for decades, with a long historical background. It will be exciting to see what kind of role we will have when a vaccine against Covid-19 is, hopefully, developed.

I feel that I do an important job of maintaining contact with newborns and their families and not least maintaining the childhood vaccination program. It must absolutely be the first priority and keep the child population healthy from the diseases we vaccinate against. I am thinking, for example, of polio which created fear in the 50s and which left many with sequelae and illness afterwards. Whooping cough is also a disease that spreads quickly. We also have measles which requires a high herd immunity in order not to spread.

We forget that we are so lucky to be almost free from such diseases today, when we have an effective vaccination system with reporting and a state overview of vaccination coverage in the population. We take it for granted, perhaps? But now we can feel in our bodies that we are threatened by something we cannot see, but which we know is dangerous. We have no remedy for that. I wonder if we will get this thing about vaccines back into consciousness after this? At least I notice at the health center now that the parents are happy that they can now come to get the vaccine at the recommended time and that it has not been postponed due to the situation we are in.

Friday 3 April

I am at home due to a cold. Normally I would have been able to go to work with mild symptoms, but now it is strict and I cannot go to work until I have been symptom-free for a day. I am working a little in the home office and have gained access to the municipality's network and medical record system. It feels strange to work from home when the job is usually so present with children laughing and crying, playing, talking to parents and engaging. I miss that.

So far today I have been following the e-mail where we have been presented with the shift schedules for Easter. We plan, cancel and send out new hours with information about the infection control measures at the health center. A mother calls and wants guidance on diet as the groups we usually have that deal with this topic have been canceled. She really appreciates being able to receive guidance on the phone. I know something useful even though I am at home.

Tuesday, April 14

Today we are back in full swing. Since it has been closed for Easter, we have had many people come by today. We are organizing ourselves so that we have a person in the waiting room who makes sure that the "queue" runs smoothly from the doctor to us and that they are not left waiting in the same room. We have many 6-week-old babies today since the doctor is here and this is the only doctor contact that is maintained in the changed guidelines.

Wednesday, April 15

We have just finished a small morning meeting (with a good distance) before today's work tasks await. Today, more people are working from home and therefore fewer are at work. We are excited about tomorrow's information from the Directorate of Health about the new guidelines that schools and kindergartens must adhere to when it comes to reopening. It is possible that this will have consequences for our operations and that we can return to a more normal health center program with certain precautions. We plan week by week and send out messages to parents about changed attendance times, infection control measures when they arrive and if they have questions or concerns, they can call us. I have already received signals that several parents are worried about whether they should dare to send their children to kindergarten and they are also waiting for what measures will be implemented. There will probably be a number of questions from parents afterwards that we must be ready to answer.

Monday, April 20

On Friday, the Norwegian Directorate of Health issued a recommendation regarding the restoration of normal activity at the health station, in the school health service and maternity care. The school health nurses are returning to the schools and we at the health station will follow the normal health station program. Our challenge will be to have enough distance in the waiting room, cleaning between each user and at the same time being able to have as many consultations as usual. In addition, we have had reduced operations for several weeks and we have many children who have not had health checks with a doctor and health nurse. These are still on hold. There is no information about how we will get up to date with this in the new recommendations. The dilemma is - having few people in the premises for infection control reasons, but preferably having full operations. Today we have tried to imagine how we will solve this in the future and how we will achieve practical implementation. The guide for those who have one-to-one consultations such as physiotherapists gives us good information, but it requires time and space. During the week we expect to have a plan for implementation, but there is still much that is uncertain.

Tuesday, April 21

We are awaiting word from the municipality's crisis management on when we can resume approximately normal operations. For now, we are doing as in previous weeks and have vaccinations and other necessary follow-up. I know that it is demanding not to have a clarified work situation and not to know exactly what is happening from week to week. In a way, it is a comfort that most people feel this way in their daily work and I notice that the parents we are in contact with have great understanding for the measures we have implemented.

Wednesday, April 22

The municipal kindergartens in Tønsberg municipality opened yesterday. I experience a generally positive attitude towards this both in the local media and among parents here. We support the health authorities' recommendation to send children to kindergarten and school and that this is safe with the measures that have been put in place.

Thursday 23 April

The National Group for Health Nurses in NSF is streaming live on Facebook today and talking about the new recommendations that came out on Friday. There were many useful questions that were answered. It was clarified that the recommendations are indicative as it is up to each individual municipality to see what kind of capacity they have to resume full operations. We in Tønsberg will receive an answer tomorrow from the crisis management about how our municipality will solve this.

Fredag 24. april

Vi har fått klarsignal fra kriseledelsen i kommunen til å gjenoppta driften i henhold til helsedirektoratet sine anbefalinger. Vi skal fortsatt la være å ha gruppetilbud og hjemmebesøk.

Monday, April 27

We are back to more active operations at the health center. There is now more activity here as we will try to catch up on some of the checks we were unable to take from March 12th when operations were reduced to a minimum. There are good guidelines for what should be prioritized and there are a number of children who are going in for medical check-ups here. We are starting with the youngest ones first. We have now got the infection control measures in place to accept more people and have started contacting those who will come to us. This takes a lot of time. At the same time, it is very nice to feel that we are more up and running again. Parents have started sending their children back to kindergartens and today is the first day of school for those in grades 1-4. I have the impression that the parents are a little relieved that they can return to a more normal everyday life while at the same time expressing excitement for what will happen next.

Tuesday, April 28

Today I'm thinking about creativity. From a routine workday, we see new sides of colleagues who come up with good creative solutions and can see details for how we can solve new challenges. It will be valuable to take with us when the workday normalizes sometime in the future. There is now a decrease in activity on the Corona Helpline during the weekend and weekdays. Maybe people are starting to relax and adapt to a new "normal everyday life"? I can get that impression from the people I talk to here.