We’re approaching a full year of life with SARS-CoV-2. I distinctly remember the week last summer when the nation’s attention shifted from pandemic and supporting health care workers to matters of social justice, as the first surge waned and the issue of police brutality reclaimed the spotlight. I remember the letters of support, yard signs, and food shipments to the nurse’s lounges becoming less frequent, before they stopped altogether. I remember thinking, well of course, it’s the natural progression of things, care fatigue and short collective attention span. I remember thinking how the stress and trauma our nurses were experiencing hadn’t really changed, but how well they’ve adapted, and how adaptation only came through repeated exposure and conditioning, by living in this alternate universe almost round the clock. I remember thinking then, more than ever before, that I could never do the job of an ICU nurse, for more reasons than I care to list. I remember thinking every day, literally, I don’t know how they can do this job, and how fortunate I was to be in my shoes and not theirs, even when it felt like my job was unsustainable.
At the peaks of hospitalization, I’d have anywhere from fifty to seventy patients, the majority COVID, and the majority of those, vented or on the precipice. I spent my days ping-ponging around the hospital, putting out fires, managing acute decompensations, intubating, admitting and occasionally downgrading patients, and it wasn’t lost on me that the ratio of patients-to-me being so high was protective in ways that the nurses didn’t have. They worked 2 or 3 to 1, two or three patients per nurse, meaning they spent the entire day, day after day, physically and emotionally taking care of just those patients, knowing full well they’d most likely die in their care despite their efforts. It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around, emotionally, unless you spend time in that space and for that duration. My hardest days without question aren’t the days when I don’t sit for 12 hours, log a dozen procedures, bouncing from code blue to code blue, but the slower days when I’d spend more up close and personal time talking to patients as people, and their children, and parents, and siblings, and then watching them die, one after another after another, and watching their nurses treat them like their own family, already connected to them on a human to human level, experiencing the pain of their deaths in ways different from everyone else in the unit. What these nurses in particular have endured over the last year is truly incomprehensible for most people, and thank god for that.
Take 15 minutes of your day, watch this short film, and see a glimpse of what it looks and feels like through their eyes, and understand that it barely scratches the surface of their experiences and trauma. If you have a nurse friend or family or neighbor who’s been caring for these patients, reach out to them, ask them if they’d like to talk or just offer them your support and appreciation. They are stronger than most but not indestructible.
The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W
At the peaks of hospitalization, I’d have anywhere from fifty to seventy patients, the majority COVID, and the majority of those, vented or on the precipice. I spent my days ping-ponging around the hospital, putting out fires, managing acute decompensations, intubating, admitting and occasionally downgrading patients, and it wasn’t lost on me that the ratio of patients-to-me being so high was protective in ways that the nurses didn’t have. They worked 2 or 3 to 1, two or three patients per nurse, meaning they spent the entire day, day after day, physically and emotionally taking care of just those patients, knowing full well they’d most likely die in their care despite their efforts. It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around, emotionally, unless you spend time in that space and for that duration. My hardest days without question aren’t the days when I don’t sit for 12 hours, log a dozen procedures, bouncing from code blue to code blue, but the slower days when I’d spend more up close and personal time talking to patients as people, and their children, and parents, and siblings, and then watching them die, one after another after another, and watching their nurses treat them like their own family, already connected to them on a human to human level, experiencing the pain of their deaths in ways different from everyone else in the unit. What these nurses in particular have endured over the last year is truly incomprehensible for most people, and thank god for that.
Take 15 minutes of your day, watch this short film, and see a glimpse of what it looks and feels like through their eyes, and understand that it barely scratches the surface of their experiences and trauma. If you have a nurse friend or family or neighbor who’s been caring for these patients, reach out to them, ask them if they’d like to talk or just offer them your support and appreciation. They are stronger than most but not indestructible.
The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W