Message from frontline nurses: Let’s keep the actual enemy in sight

Recent protests against stay-at-home restrictions across the country are painful for nurses most affected by the pandemic and people caring for Covid-19 patients. 4 nurses working in Recent York City hospitals and graduates of Pace University’s Lienhard School of Nursing decided to work with one among their professors to share their thoughts on behalf of nurses on the front lines.

There are refrigerated trucks stuffed with bodies in front of our hospitals. Lots of us need to pass them on our solution to work, knowing that amongst those bodies are the patients we cared for yesterday, and once we leave 12 hours later, they will likely be joined by a few of the patients we cared for today. Even harder to bear is the knowledge that amongst these bodies there could also be a colleague or friend, other nurses who contracted COVID-19 while caring for others. It’s heartbreaking and terrifying because we all know that we, too, could find yourself in a body bag placed on the shelf of a refrigerated truck.

It’s no wonder that the sight of individuals protesting against protective measures evokes such strong emotions in us – anger, fear, sadness. Anger that by ignoring restrictions or insisting on the suitable to risk their very own health, also they are risking our lives. Fear that their actions will jeopardize the tenuous progress we now have made, at great sacrifice, within the fight against this virus. Sadness that everybody should feel the necessity to risk their health and the lives of their family and community to satisfy basic needs.

Those of us who work in hospitals see the worst features of this disease: emergency departments stuffed with patients who’ve difficulty respiration, a patient who one minute is on the phone together with her daughter and the subsequent minute is intubated in a serious condition. We see a patient connected to 6 drips, lying on his stomach, back exposed, with a tube down his throat, while one among us holds the phone by the door in order that members of the family who aren’t allowed to return to the hospital can watch while the remaining of us provide care in case of emergency. Perhaps they may take comfort in knowing how hard we worked to save lots of them. We see the suffering, the loss, the ultimate goodbyes via FaceTime, the sadness of dying alone in a makeshift room in a short lived intensive care unit.

We try to seek out time to carry our patients’ hands because we all know members of the family cannot. A few of us pin a photograph of ourselves on our lab coat in order that patients can connect with an actual person, not only the muffled voice of a faceless doctor behind a mask, covered from head to toe in personal protective equipment. PPE that remains to be missing. Yes, we are able to now get a brand new N95 for each 12-hour shift, but this remains to be removed from best practice of getting to dispense a brand new drug for each patient. And providing excellent care is becoming increasingly difficult. As increasingly more nurses get sick, we’re understaffed. Sometimes we’re unable to supply essential care – measures which can be so essential to making sure the dignity and luxury of every patient.

But every part looks normal…

by dave shafer/via flickr

Meanwhile, those feeling the economic impact are wondering: “how should we live?” Their jobs have disappeared and their livelihoods have been taken away. The rent or mortgage is due in just a few days and so they do not have the cash. Sure, possibly they can not be evicted for now, but how will they provide you with three or 4 months’ rent when that is throughout? How do they feed their families within the meantime?

When they appear around, every part else looks normal. In lots of parts of the country, they might not even know anyone who has gotten sick, let alone died. Their hospitals are still quiet. For them, the plain threat isn’t disease, but poverty. The loss isn’t a friend, father or son, but a source of income, the flexibility to look after the family. They fear they may never get better.

We understand. While all of us face the identical threat – COVID-19 – our experiences with it vary greatly. We nurses are immersed within the human suffering attributable to the disease itself, while many others are immersed within the human suffering attributable to the economic and social impacts. It is simple to permit the pain inherent in our perspective to blind us to the opposite person’s pain. And forget who the actual enemy is and who we’re Power do to beat this.

Please wait just a little longer. The stay-at-home strategy is working. We see this in our emergency departments; the quantity of incoming data decreases. This may be seen within the decreasing variety of deaths across town. Every single day we’re increasingly more hopeful. Lifting restrictions too early or too quickly will result in cases rising again. It’s a stealth virus – it’s estimated that not less than 25% and as many as 80% of individuals infected with the virus haven’t any symptoms. It quietly lurks in communities before it explodes. Here in Recent York, we’re battling the results of this explosion. Staying home can assist prevent your community from experiencing this.

A alternative we shouldn’t make.

Many Americans say they’re willing to risk contracting the virus to return to work. How is it that on this wealthy and resourceful country, so many individuals find themselves trapped in a situation where they’re willing to risk illness and death to maintain a roof over their heads and put food on the table? Let’s direct our protests to those that can do something about it – as an alternative of demanding that the federal government end the protections that protect us, let’s demand that it provide simpler and timely resources to assist us get through this crisis, each with lives and livelihoods intact. .

Rachel Maouyo, BSN, RN-BC
Bridget Południe, BSN, RN, CCRN
Barbara Hobilla, BSN, RN, CEN
Hojung Kim, BSN, RN, CCRN

Karen Roush, Ph.D., RN, FNP-BC