An ICU Nurse Reflects on ‘Returning Home from COVID Island’

“It’s hard to remember my job before all this began,” writes critical care nurse Deirdre McNally in this month’s Reflections essay, “Returning Home from COVID Island.” As the pandemic abates, she finds herself searching for a coherent narrative to understand what she’s experienced. But it’s not so simple. Memories of patients, moments, stray images from many months before slip unbidden into her head.

The difficulty of making sense of the past two years.

What does it mean to ‘make meaning’ from such an all-consuming experience? Maybe the answer will come with time. For now, she suggests, there are too many events, too many emotions and impressions to really absorb as things slowly resume a semblance of greater normalcy:

“For many health care providers,” she writes, “I think this is a protective mechanism meant to shield us from experiences too difficult to absorb.”

[…]

2022-03-17T11:47:07-04:00March 17th, 2022|COVID-19, Nursing, nursing career, nursing stories|0 Comments
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In All Nature’s Glory: One Patient’s Presurgical Ritual

‘Join me.’

I walked into the preoperative waiting area one morning, ready to begin my day. Standing outside my first patient’s bed bay, I asked through the drawn curtain if I could enter. Silence. I waited and then called out the patient’s name again. Again, nothing. I peeked behind the curtain. There was the patient standing in all of nature’s glory, arms extended in front of the window—eyes closed.

I stepped back and then heard her say, “Come in, join me.” I felt caught off guard, unsure of what to do. But I was also curious, so I went in.

The patient turned her head towards me and said, “Just stand next to me—the collective mind brings more energy.”

So I did. The view from this patient’s room showed a river running alongside the facility. Like her, I looked out onto the river. The sun was beginning to rise and the sky was a beautiful blend of pink and blue. I closed my eyes and a sense of serenity gently settled over me.

We stood together in silence for just a minute or two. Then the patient turned to me, grabbed her gown, and said, “Now, how can I help you?”

I found that I was smiling as I heard myself […]

2021-10-27T09:46:54-04:00October 27th, 2021|Nursing, nursing stories, patient engagement|1 Comment
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A New Nurse Learns Focus and Grace Under Pressure

“I entered this new chapter in my life running at full speed. But at nearly the same time, the world seemed to be coming to a full stop.”

That’s from the August Reflections essay in AJN: “2020: What a Time to Become a Nurse.” Alicia Sgroi finished nursing school and started as an RN in a Florida ICU in February 2020, just as the pandemic was starting to get a foothold in the United States. By June, her unit had been converted to a COVID-positive step-down unit.

Much has been written about the pressures and trauma of being a nurse during the pandemic. We know that it’s been tough for all nurses, sometimes overwhelmingly so. In fact, the original research article in the August issue of AJN is a study that looks at personal and institutional factors affecting levels of well-being and resilience among nurses during the pandemic, from staffing to support networks to personal resilience.

Rising to the occasion.

As a new nurse, Sgroi was understandably worried about catching the virus and also about having the skills to care for such patients. But as she tells it, far from discouraging her from continuing as a nurse, the experience taught her […]

2021-08-06T10:41:37-04:00August 6th, 2021|COVID-19, Nursing, nursing stories|0 Comments
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Finding Perspective In an Ancient and Fabled Landscape

“Negativity and angst dissolved. Silence seeped into our spines, relaxing our amplified neural conversations and untying cranky muscles. We were just two insignificant human specks surrounded by a massive, glacier-carved swamp; its deep bowl filled with the layering detritus of millennia…”

Illustration by Janet Hamlin for AJN. All rights reserved.

The above quote is from the July Reflections essay in AJN. We’ve been running this column for decades, each month a one-page personal essay by a different outside author, many but not all of them nurses.

The author of “Of Swamps and Pandemics” in July (free until August 20) is Pamela Sturtevant, a nurse in Massachusetts. She writes deeply and well about a simple thing: taking a walk with a companion in an ancient and fabled swamp during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Taking refuge in ‘deep time.’

While the most frightening surges of the coronavirus may be in the past, and the initially bewildering and all-powerful virus has been tamed by vaccines and precautions if not vanquished, our world hardly feels more stable than it did a year ago. Smoke from wildfires 3,000 miles to the west recently tinted a sickly yellow the air of states in the […]

2021-07-22T10:49:19-04:00July 22nd, 2021|Nursing, nursing stories|2 Comments
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Writing as Another Tool for Coping as a Nurse

“I recall wondering where this process had been all my life. Of course, it had always been there. It simply hadn’t occurred to me that writing could be such an effective tool for examining, reflecting, processing, and learning.”

‘Like a girl playing dress-up in a nurse uniform.’

by hannah olinger/unsplash

At age 19, I graduated with an associate’s degree in nursing, passed my boards, and went to work in a regional hospital near my college, in the city where I grew up. My geographical radius was as puny as the range of my life experience. I feigned excitement about the new job, but I was overwhelmed. I knew I needed more of everything: experience, education, tools for coping. Eventually, I discovered one of the missing tools was writing.

I entered every shift with anxiety, certain I would walk in on a patient or situation I was ill-equipped to handle. At night, I tossed with worry. When sleep came, dreams became nightmares of IVs running dry and patients coding.

I had only myself to blame. As a teen, I wasn’t ready to decide what to do with my life. I knew nursing was a noble profession, and my parents nudged me toward a program that was economical, efficient, and allowed me to live at home. At […]

2021-06-01T09:48:47-04:00June 1st, 2021|Nursing, nursing career, nursing stories, writing|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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