This is Sannie, a Nurse Manager for a general internal medicine unit.
“When you find out that you are the first designated COVID unit, it’s news no one ever really wants to hear or deliver to their staff. We’re a relatively new unit, and much of my staff are new grads, so this was difficult.
Currently, we are now back to being a regular, COVID negative GIM unit. We had just become comfortable working with COVID positive patients, and now there is a huge turnaround of changes and practices. I needed my team to be flexible and resilient. Hats off to my them, because it was a scary time. Nobody wants to work on a designated COVID unit. However, there’s a certain comfort that my staff felt in the stability of their role. They became less scared and were able to communicate these fears to their family.
Staff said that they were no longer “heroes” because they weren’t working with COVID patients, but in my eyes, anyone working right now is a hero.
It’s a stressful and challenging time, regardless of your role. In order to overcome a situation or work comfortably through it, you need to understand that everyone is doing their job as best they can. That’s kept me humble.
There’s anger and fear, but if you strip all of that away, you have a human being that’s trying to do their best to look after their patients and one another.”
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