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sabato 30 maggio 2020

Letter from a young nurse to Roberto Saviano during the quarantined coronavirus period

" Dear Roberto Saviano, why do you necessarily seek a culprit?"


This analysis starts from a reply letter to the writer Saviano from a nurse sent to the Italian newspaper "La Repubblica" during the period of the coronavirus crisis in Italy. The arguments put forward by the nurse presuppose the acceptance of this pandemic and this health catastrophe as a fact to be absorbed in the light of a cultural dimension of "weak avoidance of uncertainty" in which one accepts the uncertainty of life as it comes without seeking guilt in others. In Saviano's article, regarding Lombardy's regional health, finding the culprit means adhering to a cultural dimension of "strong avoidance of uncertainty" because this catastrophe must be experienced as an unbearable threat to the positive collective face of Italians and Lombards particularly.

For Saviano, finding the blame and the culprit means having the need for clarity and structuring one's own reality to create the cultural conditions for a possible future in Italy.

The nurse's letter begins with a presentation of her person as a "24-year-old nurse who was transferred to a covid department set up in a hurry in the private company where she work.".
 In this short paragraph of presentation of itself we can find very high costs for the collective face of its territory, namely Lombardia. In fact, the nurse who writes is a young person and therefore a person with little experience within the regional health system, later she says that she was "transferred quickly" and therefore with little knowledge of the new department. These words represent indeed very high costs for the positive face of the Lombard private health company as an institution of "excellence" of public-private healthcare in Lombardy. The private health company affiliated with the national health system represents an Italian specificity in all the regions and especially in Lombardy.

The nurse's letter continues with the story of a chat with a 50-year-old patient who tells her personal story. This discursive strategy by the nurse is aimed at seeking the emotions and empathy of the readers of the letter, certainly not to offer a precise and qualified response to the accusations made by Saviano. In fact, to the patient's words, the nurse says to respond moved, that is, showing that she is fully empathic and this allows her to significantly enhance her positive face within the "individualism" cultural dimension frame. In other words, the accusation made by Saviano moves on the level of the health "system" and therefore in the light of a "conscientious / unconscious" of the regional health system in terms of a "collectivism" cultural dimension. The nurse's reply from a "individual" prospective, putting forward her private experience by responding to the light of an "individualism" cultural logic with her "conscientious" self. The nurse's words to the patient are as follows: "surely this experience will take you for the rest of your life".

Ultimately, his answer is strikingly obvious, showing that he is part of the "restrained" cultural dimension because this experience pushes people to be unwilling to remember positive emotions. The patient's response will be expressed in this way:

"yes it has changed me profoundly and in my opinion it will change everyone"

With these words, the patient's response is placed within a cultural dimension of a "long-term temporal orientation" because people change according to the events of life. At the same time, his statement falls within a "collectivism" dimension because "a conscientious us" is emphasized as well as the possibility of joining an enlarged context with the hope of obtaining protection in exchange for loyalty to the " Lombard" territory. The nurse replies stating: "I sincerely hope so, because if not even a pandemic changes we are in bad shape".

The nurse's hope is to see this transition from a cultural dimension with a "short-term temporal orientation" in which people are always equal to themselves while such an event as the pandemic should push people to join a cultural dimension with a "long-term temporal orientation" because people must change in the light of new circumstances, demonstrating that the most important facts for themselves and their country must happen in the future. If this change does not happen then this means that we are deeply linked to this "short-term" cultural dimension that always pushes us to live with this feeling of abandonment because things do not depend on us as a typical trait of the "constrained" culture in Italy. 
Afterward, the nurse's letter continues with a description of this period in this terms:

"It has been a difficult month, new environment, new colleagues, new patient typology, isolation so as not to infect the family, away from affections, messy habits, sadness, bewilderment. Go to the work every day and see many patient lonely and sick, scared people and tired of breathing it marked me a lot "

The list proposed by the nurse continues to constitute a form of threat to the positive face of Lombardy's health care because the girl lists the difficulties of her job by citing "new environment, new colleagues and new patients typology", all of which are elements of "novelty" that fall within the dimension of disorganization and therefore are typical behaviours of organization that lives in harmony with a cultural dimension of "weak avoidance of uncertainty" with strong tolerance, comfort with chaos, ambiguity and with little consideration for the well-being of healthcare personnel. This is possible because basically health workers (nurses) are perceived as incompetent by the health system as they are only "there" because they need a job.
A new environment can be understood as a place where the "individualism" cultural dimension is increased because everyone must take care of themselves and others are considered as individuals and not as an "in-group" since it takes time to build this "feeling "of belonging. These elements of "novelty" necessarily push the nurse to adhere to a "restrained" cultural dimension because the feeling of abandonment becomes prevalent and a person lives with little propensity in remembering positive emotions in this kind of situation. This pandemic period has greatly pushed the nurse into the "restrained" cultural dimension. This pandemic was experienced by many patients within the cultural framework of the "individualism" type because the disease was experienced with a "conscientious self" and with the maintenance of the right to privacy due to the absence of family visits or friends.

It is interesting to note that in this period an entire nation embraced the slogan "everything will be fine" constituted in terms of analysis of the speech by a third person to the future with a typical impersonal value to represent an element of "de-responsibility "by the main actors involved in the management of the health crisis. This slogan in the Italian language highlights a cultural tendency for a "weak avoidance of uncertainty" by the institutions (in this case Media), which accept with little stress to live in the ambiguity and chaos generated by the new critical situation. On the contrary, the individual reactions of people in their daily life are usually located in the cultural dimension of "strong avoidance of uncertainty" as in the case of Saviano who does not agree to live within this dimension of "weak avoidance of uncertainty" imposed by institutions (the media above all).
 The real meaning of "everything will be fine" in media terms can be understood as a form of accentuation of the heroism of doctors and nurses, creating a feeling of fear with the use of the number of patients without providing any contextualization element. On the contrary, If we talk about "everything will be fine" from the point of view of the cultural dimension of "strong avoidance of uncertainty" it means first of all talking about the collapse of the public-private model of Lombard health care, it means talking about tests, tampons, imposing masks in the social space in order to anticipate the end of confinement, have a greater number of intensive care beds and also think of a national strategy to distribute medicinal products in pharmacies that can help to protect against the virus.

Instead, all these elements of context analysis that came out of the pandemic are not answered in the words of an insider such as the nurse. The response offered by the nurse is linked to the value of sacrifice, waiting, mercy and charity. From this list offered by the nurse we can easily see a purely "religious" roots for this person who believes as a response to the pandemic in the values ​​of "sacrifice" understood as a cultural dimension with a "strong avoidance of uncertainty" because little consideration is given to your own well-being. In addition, the nurse offers us to adhere to a "short-term orientation" because there are universal lines regarding what is good or bad in situations, where being at the service of others is important and there are imperatives that move our lives.

In addition, sacrifice is largely part of the "restrained" cultural dimension because one does not live inclined to remember positive emotions when adhering to this value.

The value of waiting is instead linked to the cultural dimension of a "long-term orientation" because a good person adapts according to the circumstances, with a greater aptitude for perseverance.
Waiting allows a feeling of control over one's life linked to the total absence of the "satisfied" cultural dimension in one's private life. Mercy and charity are values ​​linked to the "collectivism" type dimension in which people live in adherence with a parameter of the "we conscientious", with a feeling of belonging and where relationships are more important than tasks. Mercy and charity as christian values ​​can create a society with "low social distance", but also a "long-term temporal orientation" because individual life is linked by shared tasks within society. For the nurse, Saviano's article leaves you speechless because of its background of sadness and controversy. In other words, the categories used by the nurse are astonishment or "being without words", that is to say being in harmony with a cultural dimension with a "strong avoidance of uncertainty" because I am intolerant towards people and ideas divergent while his feeling of sadness falls within the "restrained" cultural dimension because it is difficult to be happy when one is unwilling to remember positive emotions. The difficulties linked to the Covid 19 crisis must be addressed mainly within the "individualism" dimension and above all in light of a "restrained" cultural dimension for the nurse while Saviano's article puts all Lombard health care in question as an approach linked to cultural adherence to the "collectivism" model and with a "strong avoidance of uncertainty" cultural dimension.

In her letter, the nurse speaks only "for herself" showing all her inability to understand that she is part of a much larger structure than she is, as the Lombardy regional health system can be.

The nurse feels the need to questioning her "annoyance" understood as a small form of intolerance towards divergent ideas as an element to be seen as adherence to a cultural dimension with a "strong avoidance of uncertainty". For the nurse, the contradiction lies in the difference between the position of the Italian collective face summarized in the slogan "everything will be fine" as a way to talk about the future while Saviano's position for the nurse about the future is controversial, with sentences for those who have made mistakes, anger and sadness.

  From our approach, Saviano intent is to get out of a cultural dimension of "weak avoidance of uncertainty" as a trademark of the "media" to seek blame as the real goal of the journalist who does not want to be distracted by the rhetoric of "everything will be fine" . Saviano needs clarity in order to be able to adhere to the future and these elements are not present in the management of the health crisis nowadays. This absence of data pushes necessarily into the "constrained" dimension where it becomes difficult to remember positive moments in the enlarged Italian context and in particular when thinking about the model of health care in Lombardy, which has shown very big limits in the management of crisis becoming a threat to the collective positive face of Italians as a whole.

For the nurse, this period of severe deprivation understood as adherence to the "restrained"cultural dimension where you are left to yourself cannot fail to have brought about changes in the way Italians feel. For her, this "constrained" dimension should give rise to a renewed interest in the "collectivism" cultural dimension and also for a "long-term temporal orientation".

In his writing it seems clear how Saviano remains for the nurse linked to the dimension of "strong avoidance of uncertainty" as a way to face and live the future. While unwilling to pay costs for his negative face with an ex officio defense of the guilty, the nurse's behaviour pushes for indulgence in the face of mistakes made in order to build the future for the country.
This solution entails a strong cultural dimension of "weak avoidance of uncertainty and a "long-term orientation" by the nurse but they are based on weak and inconsistent bases to see the light in a context such as that of Lombard and Italian public-private health. The request for a new look represents the nurse's final exhortation from which to start again in terms of cultural dimensions useful for a country that does not intend to build the future by unfairly flying over the responsibilities of others.

Webgraphy:

 https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2020/04/20/news/la_lettera_di_una_giovane_infermiera_caro_roberto_saviano_perche_cerchi_per_forza_un_colpevole_-254482551/

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