25/01/2021
I often have people ask how I am doing. How’s the hospital? So a few weeks ago, I tried to put into words what it’s been like. If you take the time to read this, thank you for taking the time to hold space for all of us healthcare workers who are tired and hurting. 🖤
“A Glimpse at Life in a COVID ICU”
The resignations come regularly now. Most are not a surprise.
Why would you bust your ass like this when you can get paid more to do the same work?
I don’t blame those who want to take a travel contract for much the same reason. If you are able to uproot and travel, now is the time to do it.
But this one? This one caught me off guard. I didn’t see it coming, and that hurts.
She resigned. I thought she was doing fine. Sure she was new, but she did such good work. Cheerful and social, appearing to be making good relationships with her coworkers. Laughing, joking, asking appropriate questions. Managing to not only graduate nursing school in a pandemic, but endure her unit transitioning to a covid dedicated area right when she was learning to be a new nurse on her own. I just didn’t worry. She seemed fine. No alarm bells went off for me.
But I missed it. I missed it, didn’t I? Things weren’t going as easy as they seemed.
It’s been a sinister and sneaky road. We as healthcare workers have adapted.
First we adapted to the unknown of how to deal with this mystery virus. We feared for the exposure of ourselves, and feared taking it home to our families. And then we adapted.
We learned how to add tedious donning and doffing to our time management for patient care. We had to quickly figure out how to communicate what was happening in a hospital room to family members who weren’t present.
We started to get the routine picture of the patient. They only vary a little bit. Sometimes it feels like if we only had a small set of stamps, we could complete our report sheet for any one of them.
High flow, BiPAP or ventilator. Inhaled epoprostenol. Some steroids and vitamins, symptom management and tummy time. We learned how to gather our coworkers as a team and roll our patients up like a giant burrito and shift their habitus onto their bellies or sometimes testing out if they can breathe on their back. Those fancy treatments we hear talked about on TV? They’re usually no longer useful and have lost their efficacy once a patient is sick enough to be admitted to our unit. When kidneys fail, we bust out our dialysis skills. And many times we do this whole checklist, and then just watch as the patient doesn’t respond.
How many times do we call the house manager for visitation permissions for end of life? Allowing the family members to come to the bedside for an inhumane one hour where they are supposed to grasp what they are seeing, say goodbye, and leave with their grief experience completed having reached acceptance.
So much trauma. We’ve bagged a lot of bodies. Reminding ourselves that this could be our loved ones. Trying to not become immune to the routine of seeing the same thing over and over.
All of this is happening while our own kids are home, and we are unskillfully managing assisting their education. We are working abnormally long hours. Thankfully we are getting paid with incentive for our time, but one’s body and mind can only handle so many 14 hour days just for the sacrifice of a paycheck.
We are staffing entire units worth of ICU beds that never existed before. Patients doubled up in rooms, our census rapidly expanding well past the point of manageability. Yet we don’t have an influx of healthcare workers. The whole country is like this.
This is not New York City in the beginning of the pandemic, being ravaged, but with staff coming in, ready and willing to lend a hand. There is no one coming to save the day this time. So we expand our patient load. Take on more than we ever have before.
Do you know what it does to someone who has high standards and wants to provide excellent patient care if you give them an unreasonable, unmanageable assignment? They can’t do it. We’re set up to fail. And for the type of nurse that wants to win the challenge they’re faced with when caring for patients, that’s a specific and debilitating type of torture.
While at the same time with all this, we face the constant staffing challenge of the inevitable resignations. Frequent sick calls. So many of our own getting Covid. Every day getting emails and text messages reporting that we are short and asking for help.
Showing up to work and seeing my coworkers family member in one of our beds. That was the worst for me.
As I list out the things that we have become accustomed to enduring, is it any wonder I missed it? How can we possibly care for each other? How can we hold on to someone else’s hand when we are a human chain dangling off of a cliff? We can only hold on for so long. We’re only human.
And yet I still want to try. If you or someone who just feels railroaded by this pandemic, you are not alone. We are all struggling. And it’s OK to not be OK.
It’s OK to leave a job because you have a ton of student loans and you want to be compensated for your hard work.
It’s OK to step back and focus on your family because you feel like they are slipping through your hands too.
It’s OK to lean in on your coworkers for support.
It’s OK to have that mental breakdown.
You are only human. And this is and ungodly weight for one to carry.
It’s OK to take a step back from the career that you thought was your calling. This was not what you signed up for.
It’s OK for you to try to find ways to alleviate your stress. Whatever works.
But you shouldn’t ever feel alone. There are people who love and care about you and you owe it to yourself to not lose yourself in this swirling dumpster fire. Please reach out. Talk to someone.
We are all handling a lot, but we also get it. We know that this sucks. The workload and demand of this pandemic is taking the most confident, tenured nurses out at the knees.
If you’re new during this. If you oriented to your unit, never even knowing what the faces of your coworkers really look like, because we are all wearing scrub caps, enhanced eyewear, masks, gowns, and gloves all the time... you deserve to give yourself a moment of compassion.
You are not alone. And hear me, that you most certainly have people who care and are here for you.
Watch out for your co-workers, friends. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, but we are far from being out of it. And in the end, when we come out the other side, we will only have left of ourselves what we cared for enough to preserve. You are always human first. Period.
Hang in there and take care of yourself, healthcare workers.
A Glimpse at Life in a COVID ICU Post author:laurawrightaz Post published:January 26, 2021 Post category:Covid / Nurse Life Post comments:0 Comments The resignations come regularly now. Most are not a surprise. But this one? This one caught me completely off guard. I didn’t see it coming, and th....
