NursingWorld.org: The human toll of the Coronavirus-19 pandemic is being felt throughout the nation and most acutely by the nation’s largest body of health care professionals – nurses. These nurses will deliver the vast majority of patient care as COVID-19 spreads across the country.
Washington Post: What seven ICU nurses want you to know about the battle against covid-19 (December 7, 2020):
- Kori Albi – Covid unit intensive care nurse and unit supervisor – Idaho. This virus has caused this feeling, this sense of isolation. The covid unit is an isolated desert. Every door is shut. The amount of death with covid is profound. And it’s a long drawn-out process. It’s a slow, lonely death.
- Catie Carrigan – ICU – Mississippi. There are some patients who have been in their younger 20s and their younger 30s, and I think maybe those are the hardest cases. They have their whole entire lives ahead of them, and then they get hit with this disease that everybody thinks is a hoax and then they die.
- Allison Wynes – Medical intensive care unit -Iowa. I cry every day when I walk in to work, and I cry every day when I walk to my car after work. It’s the human resources we are running low on. It’s the human cost of caring for these patients that has been keeping me up at night and really making me nauseous every day.
- Luisa Alog Penepacker – ICU – Illinois. It can be frightening for patients because we’re kind of scary-looking. You walk through the hall, and you see a lot of patients on ventilators. You hear a lot of beeping. It’s a busy place. You don’t know what to tell family members when you see them. You can’t even hug them.
- Tammy Kocherhans – Respiratory ICU – Utah. It’s very hard as a nurse when you wrap your heart and soul into taking care of these patients. I started noticing that I was emotionally tired. I was physically completely exhausted. And I was beginning to question whether or not I could continue forward being a nurse at all. I was past my physical capacity.
- Nate Smithson – Respiratory ICU – Utah. Balancing work and life is something that used to seem possible. Now it doesn’t seem like there is any difference between the two. I fall asleep and I dream about my patients. I’ve had panic attacks multiple times, where the anxiety and stress is overwhelming, and I can’t handle it.
- Kahlia Anderson – ICU – Ohio. Once covid hit, there was no room for other types of patients anymore. Everyone had covid, everyone was sick, everyone was intubated or approaching intubation. We did cry in the beginning, and now not so much. But now it’s just — it’s almost everyone’s story.
American Nurses Foundation Coronavirus Response Fund has four focus areas, based on information received from tens of thousands of responses to the ANA COVID-19 survey, town halls, outreach from nurses as well as state nursing associations. Donate online.
- Supporting the mental health of nurses – today and in the future
- Ensuring nurses everywhere have access to the latest science-based information to protect themselves, prevent infection, and care for those in need
- Driving the national advocacy focused on nurses and patients
- Provided direct financial assistance to nurses
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