Frontline Nurses
What have you learned from the frontlines of fighting the coronavirus that you most want policy makers, health care administrators and your bosses to know? If you were in charge, what is the first thing you would change to ensure we never go through this again?
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Responses
An I.C.U. Nurse's Coronavirus Diary--A New York Times Op-Ed
Theresa Brown, Nurse-Writer here, honoring and giving credit to another Nurse-Writer, Simone Hannah-Clarke. This beautiful piece should be widely read. In telling the story of one nurse, it honors all nurses.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/opinion/coronavirus-icu-nurse.html
These are not new challenges
Based on your experience as a frontline nurse dealing with COVID-19, what are your challenges, ethical dilemmas and fears?
Challenges that we are facing in dealing with the pandemic of CoVid-19 are the challenges that we face every day multiplied and magnified. The broken system that has allowed multibillion dollar for profit health care systems to embrace productivity, reactivity and reimbursement over preparedness and an adequate resource supply is a daily struggle. When I say adequate resource supply I mean PPE, ventilators, doctors, nurses and support staff of all kinds. You will never convince me that the…
So many challenges
As a nurse with a wide variety of experience in multiple specialty facilities from Floor nursing in Florida to Nurse Management in Nevada I can state definitively that the challenges we face exist in Both the patient population we treat as well as amongst the maze of oversight providing conflicting information and directives. Our understanding of the coronavirus is fluid and ever evolving. Our response too has been inconsistent and created much confusion amongst health care workers and patients alike. To compound the situation large corporations that run the healthcare facility often seem to be placing profit above the safety…
Read the Full ResponseFor Next Time
For next time, and there will be a next time, I would like to see nurses in the leadership role of the preparation and response. For every patient that has a physician at the bedside, there are more nurses to carry out the orders, monitor the vitals, give the meds, notify the physician of changes in condition. We know this. Our knowledge of the art and science of caring is specialized and distinct. Why are we underrepresented in the planning and preparation for the response, both at a national level and on our state and local levels too? I see…
Read the Full ResponseHow many will die
I can’t get the chorus of Crosby Stills Nash and Young’s song Four Dead in Ohio out of my head.
How many of my fellow caregivers will die from Covid. How many dead in the ICU? How many dead in ED? How many will, like so many people who are suffering from this pandemic, die alone.
I found this list today https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927976 John Kerry famously asked about the Vietnam war “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the…