Abstract
Residential nursing homes were particularly badly affected by the first wave of COVID-19, with large numbers of their frail person getting infected with COVID-19 and dying. The staff in these structures were catapulted into a reality very different from what they were used to. They had to adapt the way they used to take care of their patients in a very short space of time and in a scenario that was continually changing. In this manuscript we describe the subjective experience of staff in a number of Italian nursing homes during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic; and we report data showing the effectiveness of the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) treatment provided to support them during this Pandemic.