On being bold in New Zealand

Sigma was at the cusp of its 100th anniversary when the delta variant hit New Zealand. I remember reflecting on Past President Richard Ricciardi’s inspirational message celebrating Sigma’s Founders Day, especially around parallel pandemics. The parallels were between the years before Sigma’s founding and how our founders lived through the influenza pandemic, just like how we are living through the COVID-19 pandemic now on Sigma’s 100th anniversary.

Currently, President Ken Dion and the board call on all Sigma nurses to “be bold.” In their words, “Be Bold, just as our founders were during the turbulent times in which they founded this now global organization … Being bold requires you to step outside your silo and engage with others for the sake of our populations, our profession, and our planet.” How can one be bold in our context? Let me share my story.

I was a university lecturer and PhD student when COVID-19 was detected in New Zealand in 2020. My life used to be predictable. However, the urgent need for senior nurses with specialist skills in infection prevention and control made me drop everything to embrace a life of uncertainty. It was a call for help from our health system, and I knew I had to answer the call. I had to shift from working from home to working on the frontlines. I had to be bold.

Within five days, I transitioned from being an academic to being a COVID-19 Clinical Nurse Specialist for Infection Prevention and Control (CNS-IPC) in a primary healthcare setting. This advanced nurse clinician role is critical in ensuring the safety of thousands of New Zealand returnees, families, communities, and multisectoral workforce teams within Managed Isolation and Quarantine Facilities (MIQF) in Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city. I am the lead specialist in nine out of 18 MIQFs in Auckland. The MIQF is one of the four health pillars of New Zealand’s COVID-19 Elimination Response. MIQFs are at the frontline of New Zealand’s defence against COVID-19, doing essential work to protect New Zealanders from the global pandemic. Tens of thousands of returning New Zealanders go through MIQFs, where they are cared for and supported before they can join the community.

I had been a CNS-IPC for six years before I joined academia. I managed numerous hospital outbreaks, engaged with patients and their families, educated health staff from hospital cleaners to allied health professionals and physicians, developed policies, conducted clinical audits, completed health research, and much more. What else can go wrong? However, just like everyone else, no one was prepared for this pandemic.

More than two years in, being bold has served me well. I survived years of being pulled in every direction while visiting multiple MIQFs, emergency housing for the homeless, and even justice facilities daily. Work life was challenging, but I loved how I helped keep New Zealanders safe. What I loved most was engaging with non-health frontline staff, providing them evidence-based information, responding to their concerns, and educating them on the science of COVID-19 transmission prevention measures. Many of them said they loved how I could simplify information while making the education session fun. Science can be fun, too! Science underpins my practice, and it makes me bold.

My visits also required engagement with New Zealand defence force managers, hotel management, district health board staff, police, private security, and representatives from several ministries to implement infection control best practices and policy development. It was a tough job, but I was doing it for public safety. We managed to keep our case numbers low through leadership, engagement, and commitment to keep each other, our families, and our communities safe. Commitment to public safety makes me bold.

By the end of June 2021, I thought we were out of the woods. I went back to university teaching in July, then the delta variant hit New Zealand in August. I was with colleagues in the faculty room when the Prime Minister announced another lockdown by midnight of that day, 17 August. It was like a déjà vu, but this time we had to act faster. We knew what to do, wished each other well, and promised to see each other in person in some unknown future.

Fast forward to 2022 and here I am again, traveling the streets of Auckland to visit multiple MIQFs and public facilities. New Zealand’s vaccination rate is now at 95%, thus the country has shifted to a COVID-19 Protection Framework. Engagement with representatives from other New Zealand ministries has now been added to my portfolio as part of our community outreach programme to address inequity.

This pandemic continues to evolve. While we managed to keep the number of those affected with the delta variant low, we are now faced with the highly-transmissible omicron variant.

Unfortunately, the omicron variant is now out in our vulnerable communities. At the end of January, all of New Zealand shifted to a Red traffic light setting (COVID-19 protection framework). This setting allowed vaccinated New Zealanders more freedoms—most parts of life continue as usual—while health and multisectoral workforce teams on the frontlines continue to protect New Zealand from COVID-19. Nurses’ challenge is bigger than ever. As the pandemic continues to unfold, nurses must be bold, not just at one time, but all the time.