Nurses on the frontline during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland

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This is a unique indepth account of what it was really like for nurses redeployed to unfamiliar teritory on Ireland's frontline in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It allows the reader to 'step into the shoes' of the nurses, to experience a snapshot of how incredibly overwhelming and traumatic it was for them as they faced the biggest existential threat in their personal and professional lives to date. Severe trauma and burnout ensued, some of them even had to choose which patients to save over others. In facing this adversity, the study also shows how strongly they engaged in self-coping strategies, most notably by the extraordinary use of metaphors to help put in words 'the meaning of their highly burdensome experiences', and by 'hunkering down' and entering a 'flow-type state' to detach and cope. This made them stronger together to fight back against a fickle world who had finally turned against them after once calling them heroes in capes. This can at times be a tough read, particularly if you went through what these nurses went through, but I hope this paper gives voice to the millions of nurses around the world that sacrificed themselves for the sake of their patients in very difficult circumstances.

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