Tell me what your situation is.
You're in a hospital that is primarily,
almost completely COVID-19,
not all of the beds, and the ward you're on
is all COVID-19, correct?
That is correct, I work in a 24 bed ICU
and basically every patient, at this point,
is on a ventilator.
We typically only have, probably,
less than 50% of the patients
on ventilators at one time.
Okay, and let's just be real honest here,
you're the one that is there
at the most critical moment.
In other words, when it gets down to someone coding,
someone that is stopping breathing,
struggling to hang on to life,
you're the one that comes with the crash cart,
you're the one that's charged with
attempting to resuscitate
and do whatever you can to prolong their life,
if that's possible, correct?
That is correct, as my role as the rapid responser,
I primarily work in the ICU,
I have quite a bit of critical care experience,
I think it's about 15 years now,
but, when they call a code,
which is when someone's heart stops
or someone's having trouble breathing,
or any type of complication
outside of the normal realm,
they will call a rapid response.
In this situation, and in others,
but certainly in this situation
where family can't be in the hospital in the room,
many times you're the last voice
that patients hear before they pass.
That is unfortunately correct
and that's one of the things
that bothers me quite a bit.
It causes me a great deal of anxiety.
What we do is we employ the use of iPads
for these patients and we have them
contact their families when we get close
to the point where they're about
to go on a ventilator
or sometimes that end of life situation.
I want to ask you a question
that's maybe a little different,
what I'm interested in is for you to take me through
the night, when you're by yourself,
after you've been through one of these
often prolonged shifts.
You've had to deal with this,
you're now home alone,
it's maybe the middle of the night,
you're wakin' up starin' at the ceiling
at three in the morning,
what are you saying to yourself?
So that does happen, quite a bit.
A lot of times what I'm saying to myself
is that I'm scared to death
because I've been exposed a multitude of times
throughout the day, everyday.
And I wonder if I have it.
I wonder, sometimes I'll talk myself into saying,
"Oh, I have the chills, maybe I have a fever,
"I'm coughing, do I have a soar throat
"or do I just need a drink of water?
"Did I bring it home to my child,
"my family, my loved ones?"
These are the things I worry about
or I make sure, in my head,
that I've done everything correct
for a patient that I wanted to.
And, you do everything you can,
but you don't always get the result,
and probably more often than not,
the result that you want,
and what is the risk, reward ratio look like to you,
because you've got to be thinking,
"That could be me lying there soon.
"I am coming home to family,
"I could be bringing this disease home."
How do you square that risk, reward ratio
in your own mind.
I'll be honest with you,
quitting nursing or not going to work
has never crossed my mind.
It's what I do, I've been doing it for 20 years,
it's half my life and I truly couldn't imagine
doing anything different.
Yeah there's risks, but like I said,
it's what I do.
I can tell you the COVID-19 is so new
that a lot of times the treatment modalities
that we choose for patients
are merely a guess, an educated guess,
but we've felt that, I'm sure,
everyone in the medical profession
has felt responsible for a death.
I'm seeing more death now than ever.