Cast Into the Shadows: COVID-19’s Power Over Non-COVID Cases

As a pediatric ICU nurse in a hospital that has not experienced an overwhelming surge of COVID-19 patients, it has taken me some time to register the ways this pandemic has affected my perspective and practice.

Non-COVID diagnoses left in the shadows.

Photo by Unjay Markiewicz/ Unsplash

I recently took care of two young patients, each with acute and unexpected conditions. One was under post-operative care after a brain tumor had been removed the day before. The other had been newly diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. What stood out to me as I interacted with their families was that these were some of the only people I would interact with in this period who did not have COVID foregrounded in their mental and emotional space. This feeling was followed by the sobering realization that this was only because they found themselves dealing with something just as insidious, if not more so.

In both cases, the families observed confusing symptoms in their children and had to wrestle with whether or not to go to the ED in the midst of a pandemic. Only when the symptoms became so severe and concerning did these families decide they could no longer avoid the ED. Now facing an inpatient hospital […]

2020-06-02T09:32:44-04:00June 2nd, 2020|family experience, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing stories, patient engagement, Public health|1 Comment
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Time Matters, Priorities Change: A Nurse and Cancer Survivor on Living with the Pandemic

Everything is different, and the same.

Michael Himbeault/Wikimedia Commons

It’s going to be a while before things get to normal, if they ever do. It’s more like the future will become the normal.

The only thing in my experience I can liken it to is my cancer survivorship: you start living your life again, but everything is different. Priorities change. Your sense of safety never fully returns, yet because of this you become more purposeful in living: time matters. It’s as though you go on living, but learn a new way to do it.

There’s actually a sense of freedom accompanying the realization that nothing/no one lasts forever.

Finding a middle ground.

After I completed treatment, I watched the Jeff Bridges film Fearless (1993). His character is a survivor of a horrendous airliner crash, and he develops a sense of invincibility as a way of coping. I understood his character really well. You either hide in fear, or you go forward as if you are invincible. Eventually, you discover a middle ground. […]

2020-05-27T10:26:29-04:00May 27th, 2020|infectious diseases, Nursing, patient experience, Public health, wellness|0 Comments
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COVID-19: It’s Not Only About Hospital-Based Nurses

‘We all just went charging towards this monster…’

We’ve all seen the photos of nurses in PPE providing care to patients who are obviously very ill with COVID-19. These nurses have justifiably received recognition and accolades for their commitment to duty under the most challenging circumstances and often at great personal risk.

I recently spoke with Megan Brunson, the president of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), who is also a supervisor in the cardiovascular ICU at Medical City Dallas Hospital.

Brunson described her own experiences, but also what she was hearing from her colleagues as they all “just went charging towards this monster called COVID.” She also talked about how the organization was rapidly developing resources, not only for clinical care but to help nurses deal with emotional stress. One initiative is partnering with DearWorld.org to create a collection of portraits and stories from nurses caring for patients with COVID-19.

Disrupting work in many settings.

But it behooves us to realize that this pandemic has not caused stress and critical challenges just for acute care nurses; nurses in many settings have been challenged and have had their work disrupted.

In the last two weeks, I spoke with nurses and nursing leaders of several organizations to learn about how the coronavirus pandemic has changed their work. […]

2020-05-15T17:09:36-04:00May 15th, 2020|COVID-19, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing roles|0 Comments
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A Message from Frontline Nurses: Let’s Keep the Real Enemy in Sight

The recent protests against stay-at-home restrictions across the country are painful to watch for nurses most affected by the pandemic, those caring for COVID-19 patients. Four RNs working in hospitals in New York City who are graduate students at the Lienhard School of Nursing at Pace University decided to work together with one of their professors to share their thoughts on behalf of nurses on the front lines.

There are refrigerator trucks filled with bodies outside our hospitals. Many of us have to pass by them when we go into work, knowing that among those bodies are the patients we cared for yesterday and when we leave 12 hours later, some of the patients we cared for today will join them. Even harder to handle is the knowledge that among those bodies may be a colleague or friend, fellow nurses who caught COVID-19 while caring for others. It is heartbreaking and terrifying because we know that we too could end up in a body bag shelved in a refrigerator truck.

So, it is no wonder that the sight of people protesting protective measures generates such strong emotions for us—anger, fear, sadness. Anger that in choosing to ignore restrictions, or insisting on the right to risk their own health, they […]

2021-01-21T11:07:20-05:00April 29th, 2020|infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective, Public health, students|7 Comments
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The U.S. Still Can’t Manage COVID-19 Testing: Why Is This Such a Big Deal?

By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, nurse epidemiologist and AJN clinical editor. Published April 20.

How is it that we in the U.S. make up 4% of the world’s population but account for more than 31% of global COVID-19 cases? Because at the start of the pandemic we weren’t prepared to test quickly and widely—and incredibly, after three months’ time, we still aren’t.

Coincidentally, both the U.S. and South Korea saw their first cases of COVID-19 on January 20. Two weeks later, South Korean scientists had perfected a diagnostic test for the virus, and infected people began to be identified and isolated.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. a series of problems and poor decisions held back test development. In early March, as the number of cases of COVID-19 exploded in parts of the country, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar promised that by March 14, labs would be running four million tests per week. As of April 20, the total number of SARS-CoV-2 tests performed in the U.S. since the pandemic began was only 3.8 million, according to covidtracker.com. Our testing capacity is frighteningly low. Estimates of an adequate […]

2020-04-20T12:32:03-04:00April 20th, 2020|infectious diseases, Nursing, Public health|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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