Adjusting Laboratory Practices to the Challenges of Wartime

4 Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics • Volume 13 • Number 3 • Winter 2023 there supporting them, fighting for them? There are intense feelings of guilt that dwell within. ********** Spring 2021, Spring 2023, The ‘Shorter’ Wars: How To Feel Worthless And How To Seek Distraction I keep working in the offices of humanitarian organisations during deadly attacks. The shorter wars. My hospital colleagues leave home and go to work exactly as they always do, as I used to do. They risk travelling through bombardment, venturing into target sites for military attacks to get to the places meant to cure and care. Fearing they will not see their families again, they compose their faces. As they always do, as I used to do. I am safer at home now. My conscience weighs heavily again. I should be in the hospital with them, facing their challenges through attacks. Does this make me worthless in war? I cannot be distracted now by tending to babies. I sit at my computer. I do not sleep. The night times are the worst. I drown myself in work tasks. I try from afar to mobilise medical teams to respond. There is little satisfaction in this if I cannot be there with them, helping, serving, accompanying. I decide to bake a cake. ********** Winter, Spring, Autumn, Summer, Any Day: How We Keep Caring Living here and working here as a doctor brings physical and mental burdens. The crushing exhaustion , the personal risks, the harrowing choices, the helplessness, the guilt, the unworthiness, the terror of seeing death and becoming dead. We all need a break. We all need a holiday. We all need to go outside. Where can we even go? Who is looking after us? But the burden and the dread are always swallowed by the deepest urge to care. Because it is within us. Because we do not want to see their families grieve. Because their families are us. Because we love. Because that is what we have to do. What alternative do we have? We must keep caring while walking through our pain. Autumn 2023 Now: How Can We Keep Caring? This was all before. The now has changed everything. I have doctor friends who have died under bombs whilst holding their children or their mothers . I have doctor friends forced to choose between remaining with patients and evacuating their families. Those who stay work to save lives, triage injuries and write the names of babies on the torsos of tiny lifeless bodies, over, and over. Without supplies, sleep, food or water, without their homes left standing, with nothing left but their grace and their humanity. As doctors in Gaza now, we weep an unbearable grief. We no longer know if we can keep caring. B Adjusting Laboratory Practices to the Challenges of Wartime Oksana Sulaieva, Anna Shcherbakova & Oleksandr Dudin A fter 500 days of the unjust war initiated by the Russians, we look back to reflect on the challenges our medical laboratory faced during these early days. On the morning of February 24th , we were awakened by the dreadful roar of sirens, the sound of which filled us with adrenaline and anxiety. Although our team had considered the risks of Russian military aggression and thus updated our emergency plan at the beginning of 2022, the first day of the war revealed that nobody was truly ready for the bombing, air alarms, tanks on the streets of towns and cities, violence and murders of civilians. That morning the city’s transportation system collapsed, and the flow of cars cluttered all the roads as people were trying to leave  Healthcare Under Fire: Stories from Healthcare Workers During Armed Conflict 5 the city and escape the upcoming atrocities and death. Serious and disquieted people hurried along the streets—some people rushed to shelters, and others went to the military registration and enlistment offices to fight against Russian aggressors for the life, independence, and sovereignty of Ukraine. We hurried to work, committed to performing our duties. Our medical laboratory serves more than 750 hospitals in Ukraine. Despite fear and uncertainty , we walked to the lab, taking our children and alarm case1 with documents and essential things. Months later, people asked us why...