COVID-19: One person’s perspective on the toll on animals and humans, from present state of the pandemic

Anonymous, RMLAT

Across the country, people are aware of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on humans across the world. We all see messages of support for health care workers, grocery store workers, janitors and others who are working hard and risking their lives during this pandemic. However, what your friends and neighbours may not be aware of is the effect of the pandemic on laboratory animals and their caretakers.

The pandemic only truly started to affect Canadian animal facilities around St. Patrick’s Day, and it was a sudden effect that will likely take time for us to process. I am writing this article on March 21, 2020, and am still processing the effects, and will be willing to bet that as a reader you will still be processing this at the time of reading. People across the country who have had long careers working with lab animals are saying they have never seen anything like this before and it is completely unprecedented.

Jason Allen and Alison Weller have both written excellent articles on disaster planning and pandemic planning for animal facilities and managers. Thus, the focus of this article will not be on the management of these issues at the facility level, but on what we, as lab animal caretakers, are feeling as a result of actions we have been forced to take in our facilities during the pandemic. I’m hoping that what you can take out of this is that the feelings you are having, whatever they are, are legitimate and important, and that you are not alone in your suffering. With that being said, I have no formal training in counseling, grief, compassion fatigue or psychology so please only let my advice guide you in your own research on the topic.

My personal account:

I don’t want to generalize our experiences. Everyone will have had a different experience with this pandemic, and some will be suffering greatly. However, I thought it would be useful to outline my own experience, as it may be similar to others’.

The week of March 16, 2020 started out relatively normal for me, in terms of the pandemic. People were still mostly at work, and the last we had heard was that it was business as usual at the animal facility. However, by the end of the week, as I’m sure played out all over Canada, the animal facility was a completely different place.

Without getting into the details, we needed to make hard decisions during the week, and we were not alone, as universities and facilities across Canada had to do the same thing. It is always unpleasant to euthanize animals, but I hadn’t thought of it any differently than if it was the end a large research experiment: It would be performed humanely, by trained and experienced individuals, and following established SOPs, and then at worst we’d need a check-in or debrief on it later.

However, Friday afternoon, while checking in with colleagues, I learned that they were feeling terrible about what had happened, and I concurred. When I checked on a Facebook group I found out that everyone across Canada was having similar feelings. However, I didn’t quite understand our collective feelings, and why we were feeling differently than we normally would after an experimental endpoint. Later that afternoon it suddenly hit me what was going on: compassion fatigue or grief.

When thinking through this situation, I since realized some possible reasons why the euthanasias that we have collectively been asked to perform this week are not the same as anything we have likely experienced before:

1. The large number of animals to euthanize at one time. Of course, many of us have ended the lives of a large number of animals for research purposes before. I have been working with lab animals for upwards of 20 years, but I still remember my first big experimental endpoint as a co-op student. I also have memories of very sick animals that I have had to euthanize over the years. However, none of those experiences left me with lasting feelings of sadness or grief. So why is this time different?
2. Big endpoints or culls many of us have carried out in the past were always for a scientific or humane reason. At the very worst, there was a change in scientific direction, or a genotype or sex that rendered animals unsuitable for research. The difference, I realized, was that we always had the time to talk through the decision and think about the 3Rs, and if we did end up unable to repurpose the animals and needed to euthanize them, it was not a quick decision and was not taken lightly. This decision had to be made quickly, and there was no time to repurpose the animals or think about the 3Rs.
3. Normally the animals we use in research are used with the intention of achieving a moral purpose, which is usually to further human or animal health. In this case, these animals achieved no moral purpose, even though the reason for their death was the totally justifiable reason of trying to save the lives of more precious animals, such as non-cryopreserved strains and important experimental animals. To make matters worse, we’ve all learned in the past few days or weeks that this has had to happen in almost every facility across Canada.The thought of that number of animals dying is deeply disturbing, no matter how we rationalize it.

Compassion Fatigue and Grief

One definition of compassion fatigue is “the change in empathetic ability of the caregiver in reaction to the prolonged and overwhelming stress of caregiving.”¹ Grief is defined as “the natural reaction to a loss.”² These are clearly different things, but they have similarities.

In the table below, I will non-exhaustively compare the symptoms of compassion fatigue to the symptoms of grief, because it is not clear to me which we are experiencing as a result of these pandemic measures, or if it is both (if it even matters), or whether it is different for some people than for others:

Even though the table above is nowhere near complete, it becomes obvious that whether we are experiencing compassion fatigue or grief as a result our loss, the symptoms are likely to be similar. In my opinion, one important difference between this loss and the loss of a family member (human or animal) is that because of the nature of our work, it is difficult to talk publicly about our feelings. We are worried about the backlash from those who are set against our work to begin with, which would just make matters worse. We also don’t want to betray any of the confidentiality agreements that we have signed with our institutions. In a way, this loss resembles more that of a pregnancy loss or termination, where it is often not spoken about outside of immediate family or friends due to the fear surrounding the highly polarized opinions that exist in our society.

So what can we do to help each other?

Some general advice on healing from compassion fatigue and grief are combined below (and again is completely non-exhaustive):

1. Recognize that we are feeling symptoms of compassion fatigue and/or grief. Let your supervisor know that it is going on. If you are a supervisor or manager, check in with your staff. If they do have to carry out euthanasia or other unpleasant tasks, take all available measures to ensure they feel trained, equipped and mentally prepared for it. If they are not, try to see if there is someone else available to do the task. Check in with them before, during and after the task.
2. Offer employees to take advantage of free counselling services if available. Take the time out of the day to just talk to your staff and listen to what they have to say. Recognize that they may need time to heal from this loss, and if that time needs to be paid sick leave, grant it to them.
3. If as an individual, you are feeling symptoms of compassion fatigue and/or grief take time to allow the grieving process to happen. You might not have time now, but eventually you will need to take time for yourself. Do some of the general things that are recommended for management of grief, such as: Allow yourself to cry and support others who may feel like crying. Try to eat healthy and avoid excessive coffee and alcohol or other substances. Get enough sleep at night. Take care of yourself and seek professional advice if you feel you need to.
4. During this crisis, work and personal life is going to continue to throw stressful curveballs at everyone, and include social distancing, which won’t help with healing. Try to relieve stress every day by spending time with family, pets, outside on a walk or bike ride - whatever makes you feel good.
5. Once this crisis is over, consider offering training to staff on stress management, recognition of compassion fatigue, dialogue about euthanasia and its effects, etc. Work with occupational health programs to try to implement safeguards in case we encounter a similar situation in the future.
6. When the crisis is over, we are going to encounter stressful situations while trying to recover our colonies and animals to their pre-pandemic levels. Don’t be too hard on yourself, and recognize that the failures you may encounter are not your fault, and not a result of improper colony management or experimental planning. Stick up for yourself and your colleagues if in a bad situation or need help.
7. Read the articles by Jason Allen and Alison Weller to gain more info in these areas

Conclusions:

I hope as a result of reading this I’ve at least convinced you that you are not alone if you are experiencing feelings of grief or compassion fatigue right now, and that now is the time to check on your colleagues’ and team members’ mental well-being. It is going to take time for us to heal collectively, no matter what anyone says. We should continue communicating our feelings as an organization, within our teams, and between our closest colleagues, friends and families. No one is to blame for this loss, as it was unavoidable, but we all have a responsibility to think of ways to try to mitigate or prevent such a loss in any future disasters or emergency situations.

References:

1) Newsome, J. T., Clemmons, E. A., Fitzhugh, D. C., Gluckman, T. L., Creamer-Hente, M. A., Tambrallo, L. J., & Wilder-Kofie, T. (2019). Compassion fatigue, euthanasia stress, and their management in laboratory animal research. Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, 58(3), 1289–1292. https://doi.org/10.30802/AALAS-JAALAS-18-000092

2) Medical Definition of Grief: https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=24274

3) https://www.helpguide.org/articles/grief/coping-with-grief-and-loss.htm