Their average age is in their thirties, and most of them have dealt with unemployment and precariousness while continuing to train.
There are 200 seasoned nurses in the daily overload of primary care and their knowledge and skills support the successful start of vaccination against covid-19 in Galicia.
This same week they hope to have finished administering the first injection to the 37,000 residents and workers of the centers for the elderly and disabled throughout the community.
They're waiting for the doses to start coming at a faster pace so they can hit the gas.
"We are used to working very hard, without knowing very well what conditions we are going to find and combining that with family burdens," explains Eva Domínguez, 39, after immunizing the elderly in the Boqueixón nursing home last Friday (A Coruña) .
Galicia is one of the autonomies that has managed to speed up the progress of the campaign with which humanity intends to deliver the coup de grace to the pandemic.
On Friday he had administered more than 65% of the doses received, according to the Ministry of Health, and the process continued during the weekend in certain areas, oblivious to the heavy snowfalls that have blocked a large part of Spain.
The Xunta has freed the nurses who have agreed to join the team from their usual tasks.
They have compromised their full time availability in exchange for the usual salary, although it is expected that they will receive a bonus yet to be specified, explains Susana Mirás, coordinator of the deployment to immunize 4,400 people in the 43 social health centers in the Santiago health area.
Mirás, a 31-year-old nurse from the Santa Comba health center (A Coruña), a municipality of 10,000 inhabitants, received the call in which she was offered the position "with a bit of vertigo."
Two days later, on December 18, he entered the door of the small office that they have enabled in the Santiago hospital with the challenge of recruiting in just one morning the 16 colleagues in charge of immunization in the 46 municipalities integrated into the health district of the Galician capital.
Mirás' team is made up of 13 women and 3 men and is organized in pairs.
Half have obtained the EIR in Family and Community Nursing (equivalent to the MIR of doctors) and the rest have extensive experience in outpatient clinics: "They are the most expert in handling vaccines and traveling and some had already told me 'count on me' before he called them. "
The campaign began with a positive shock that forced the device to recharge: the long-awaited vaccine from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer that was due to arrive in January was brought forward to December.
"We locked ourselves up for a weekend to set up in two days what we were going to organize in 15," recalls the coordinator from Santiago.
Coordination and planning from top to bottom is essential for the Xunta's device to work, emphasize several members of the Galician team.
"The health areas respond because logistics are well tied from central services [of the Department of Health].
The plan includes everything that may arise and the steps are clear, ”says Mirás.
Diego Mosteiro, a 32-year-old nurse at a health center in Silleda (Pontevedra), agrees that in Galicia “the forecast has been good”: “We have anticipated potential problems”.
Until each nurse pushes the plunger of the syringe, the vaccination chain is susceptible to endless incidents and last-minute adjustments that Mirás solves from his office in a frenzy of telephone calls and emails.
The first link is the Department of Social Policy, the department of the Xunta in charge of collecting and sending to the General Directorate of Public Health the lists of residences with the names of those who are going to be vaccinated (with the consent of the guardian for the disabled ) and possible resignations.
With this record and the confirmation each week of how many doses will be received, the coordinator of each health area fits the puzzle of programming, contacts the residences and plans the taxi transport of the nurses to each of the centers.
"The doses are numbered, there is usually nothing left over," explains Mirás.
A third of the remittances are kept in Galicia in case problems arise with the supply of the second puncture.
Each pair of nurses, equipped with a computer with the lists, two mobile phones and an emergency briefcase in case a bad reaction to the drug occurs, is picked up by a taxi between eight and ten in the morning and transferred to the residence that touches him.
The exact time depends on the company that manages the transport and conservation of all the vaccines that arrive in Galicia, preserved in an ultra-freezer located in the A Sionlla industrial estate in Santiago.
It is important that it be done every day, because the toilets must be in the center with enough time to receive the vials, a delicate material that only they can handle.
The containers arrive in briefcases equipped with two thermometers and with padded compartments to prevent the content from shaking and spoiling.
The nurses must check that the committed doses have arrived along with needles and syringes.
They then add physiological saline to each vial to dilute the vaccine and homogenize the mixture by turning the bottle carefully so that it does not shake.
Before the injection, nurses must decide if the recipient is physically ready for it.
They do it through a small interview, crossing their medical history with the contraindications of the vaccine.
In total, they invest about five minutes in each person and if they do not put more doses, it is because there are none.
“In three or four days we are doing what they give us for a week.
There are days when I let a team go off because I have nowhere to send it, ”Mirás explains.
Mirás, Domínguez and Mosteiro graduated between 2008 and 2010, when the outbreak of the previous economic crisis froze the hiring of health workers in public health, despite the fact that the Spanish ratio of nurses is one of the worst in Europe.
They have taken years to join the Servizo Galego de Saúde (Sergas) and none have a fixed position yet.
While many of her colleagues took the suitcase to work in the United Kingdom and Germany, Domínguez sought a life in the private sector and Mirás and Mosteiro obtained the specialty in Family and Community Nursing, created in 2013 in Spain.
Approximately half of the Galician vaccination device against covid-19 has this specialized training in primary care nursing.
There are communities that still do not even recognize it as a professional category, a step that was taken in Galicia four years ago.
“We are being fundamental to face the challenge of vaccination against covid.
I hope that for the future they will take us more into account ”, demands Mirás.
The Galician nurses will begin on the 19th to administer the second dose, a phase that will overlap with the vaccination of health workers in hospitals and health centers.
Mirás has not received instructions yet, but she is willing to face the challenge with the same teams, doubling shifts and working weekends: “My colleagues ask me why they rest so much now.
I have already warned you that worse times will come ”.
Information about the coronavirus
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- Guide to action against the disease