Nurses on Non-COVID Specific Floors: What It's Like

This post was originally created on November 22, 2020.

Healthcare workers all over the United States have felt the effects of COVID-19, regardless of what type of care they are involved in. Read below to see what working in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) has been like during the COVID pandemic.

Pictured above is my beautiful mother, Rachel Turner, at work on 11/15/2020. She is seen here wearing all of her protective gear to combat the spread of COVID-19.

For the past 9 months, COVID-19 has been a major concern for people all over the United States. As shown in the news, the Coronavirus has taken a tough emotional and physical toll on our healthcare workers, since they are putting themselves at risk to give their patients the best possible care. I’ve seen a few stories and news reports come out about nurses on the front lines, which led me to wonder about how COVID has affected nurses that are still working through the pandemic but aren’t in direct contact with COVID patients. I interviewed my mother, Rachel Turner, to see what it is like being a nurse in a non-COVID care unit.

Rachel Turner has been a registered nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for 26 years. When asked what it is like working in the NICU, she describes it as “Intense. Patients are critically ill and things can change from minute to minute. You are not only involved in the infant’s life but you’re also taking care of a family in crisis”. The NICU is responsible for babies who have life-threatening conditions, making it all the more stressful to work in this field. Rachel explains the best part of her job as “making my patients and families feel comforted; answering questions, making them feel like they matter, and including them in their baby’s care”. Because of the virus, it is extremely hard to conduct Rachel’s favorite part about her job.

Emily Twinch reports out about the mental health of COVID nurses and shares Donna-Marie Thomas’s story. “Donna, a community nurse in Powys, Wales, felt so guilty she couldn’t comfort relatives when she left a patient’s house that she called them straight away to say sorry. She then spoke to a colleague, and her colleague replied in tears: ‘I’ve done the same thing’”. (Nursing in Practice). Because of COVID, there are many precautions set all throughout the hospital that make comforting patients and their families much more difficult, which emotionally affects the nurse as well as the patient and their family. These nurses aren’t used to giving distanced and isolated care. Especially for Rachel’s unit, all of the covid precautions are adding extra stress to a unit that is already intense on its own. Changes to Rachel’s unit include “Having to wear masks 24/7, (n95 masks are worn underneath their regular masks only when dealing with deliveries or if patients are COVID positive), wearing shields or goggles with a mask for the entire shift, having to report daily that we feel okay on an app called ‘Service Now’, and nurses can’t sit near each other in the break room”. Changes for patient protocol include “wearing masks 24/7, only one parent can visit their baby each day, and if a mom is covid positive we take a baby up to the NICU to quarantine for two weeks, no visitors to the baby”.

Rachel agrees with the changes. She is “rolling with it- its [her] life story". She was initially paranoid about COVID and nervous about contracting the virus. Though still weary, she is more relaxed than she was when Coronavirus first broke out. “When you have to work in healthcare and have to keep doing your job the way you’ve always done it, it makes you not as afraid. When you are a nurse you have to put yourself out there even if it’s scary”. She agrees that her perspective would be different if she was on a different floor of the hospital. On other floors “Patients could be sicker, I could be more at risk if I were exposed to it, and seeing patients sick by themselves is stressful”.

Working in healthcare is a selfless job. Millions of nurses and other healthcare professionals step out of their homes daily to take care of patients that could be exposing them to a deadly virus. Working in healthcare is even harder to do with all of the new precautions in place. Even with the changes and higher risks, healthcare workers like Rachel wouldn’t give it up for the world. Being able to take care of others and giving many patients a new chance at life is something that all healthcare professionals strive to accomplish whenever they can. When asked what she would like the readers to know, Rachel says “Hug a nurse (once COVID is over), and be thankful for healthcare workers. We leave our own families to take care of yours”. She also added “I wish my daughter would become a nurse", which I told her I would reflect upon and get back to her.

Works Cited:

Twinch, Emily. “The Toll of Covid-19 on Nurses' Mental Health - Nursing in Practice.” Nursing in Practice, 2 Oct. 2020, www.nursinginpractice.com/analysis/toll-nurses-mental-health-of-covid-19/.