In March 2020, COVID-19 wards were established in hospitals in Denmark. Healthcare professionals from a variety of specialities and wards were transferred to these new wards to care for patients admitted with severe COVID-19 infections. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a COVID-19 ward at a hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark, including focus group interviews with nursing staff, we intended to explore practices in a COVID-19 ward by seeking insight into the relation between the work carried out and the professionals’ ways of talking about it. We used a performative approach of studying how the institutional ways of handling pandemic risk work comes into being and relates to the health professionals’ emerging responses. The empirical analysis pointed at emotional responses by the nursing staff providing COVID-19 care as central. To explore these emotional responses we draw on the work of Mary Douglas and Deborah Lupton’s concept of the ‘emotion-risk-assemblage’. Our analysis provides insight into how emotions are contextually produced and linked to institutional risk understandings. We show that work in the COVID-19 ward was based on an institutional order that was disrupted during the pandemic, producing significant emotions of insecurity. Although these emotions are structurally produced, they are simultaneously internalised as feelings of incompetence and shame.

2020 年 3 月，丹麦的医院设立了 COVID-19 病房。来自不同专科和病房的医疗保健专业人员被转移到这些新病房，以照顾重症 COVID-19 感染患者。根据在丹麦哥本哈根一家医院的 COVID-19 病房进行的人种学实地调查，包括对护理人员的焦点小组访谈，我们打算通过深入了解所开展的工作与工作之间的关系来探索 COVID-19 病房的实践。专业人士谈论它的方式。我们采用表演性方法来研究处理流行病风险工作的制度方式是如何形成的，以及与卫生专业人员新出现的应对措施之间的关系。实证分析指出，提供 COVID-19 护理的护理人员的情绪反应是核心。为了探索这些情绪反应，我们借鉴了玛丽·道格拉斯和黛博拉·勒普顿的“情绪-风险-组合”概念。我们的分析深入了解了情绪是如何产生的，以及如何与机构风险理解联系起来。我们表明，COVID-19 病房的工作是建立在大流行期间被破坏的制度秩序的基础上的，产生了严重的不安全情绪。尽管这些情绪是结构性产生的，但它们同时内化为无能和羞耻感。我们表明，COVID-19 病房的工作是建立在大流行期间被破坏的制度秩序的基础上的，产生了严重的不安全情绪。尽管这些情绪是结构性产生的，但它们同时内化为无能和羞耻感。我们表明，COVID-19 病房的工作是建立在大流行期间被破坏的制度秩序的基础上的，产生了严重的不安全情绪。尽管这些情绪是结构性产生的，但它们同时内化为无能和羞耻感。