{"id":17269,"date":"2020-04-24T15:41:42","date_gmt":"2020-04-24T20:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thinkresearch.com\/ca\/?p=17269"},"modified":"2021-10-25T17:39:55","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T21:39:55","slug":"answering-the-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thinkresearch.com\/ca\/2020\/04\/24\/answering-the-call\/","title":{"rendered":"Answering the Call"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Victoria Zefkic, RN, BNSc, MPH and Think Research Clinical Knowledge Translation Specialist<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why I joined the frontline fight against COVID-19 <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For me it wasn\u2019t really a choice. Nurses were being called out of retirement. Others who work on medical or surgical floors, who don\u2019t have critical care training, were being called to the ICU to pitch in. I work full time in clinical research and development at Think Research but I figured I could do two 12-hour shifts per week at the hospital on top of that. I try to take Sundays off so that I don\u2019t burn out but for me it was a no-brainer — I\u2019m young and I\u2019m healthy and I am trained to do this job. I felt guilty not being involved so I didn\u2019t think twice. You just do it.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nursing is personal. In the ICU, the ratio is supposed to be one nurse to one patient. Thankfully, the hospitals where I work have not been overwhelmed by COVID-19 and that has continued to be my experience. So, I\u2019m with one patient for a full 12-hour shift. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are the first person who talks to that worried family everyday. Most of the patients are intubated on ventilators. They can\u2019t talk, and you have to be their voice. You are so much more involved with that one patient, you see how they are doing not just day-by-day but minute-by-minute. We find ways to detach or to find some humour in our days but you know everything about that one patient. You do get invested.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nurses will bring in their own phone in a plastic bag so that a patient who\u2019s awake and not sedated can video chat with a family member. My patients are on ventilators for a really long time. It\u2019s a slow recovery. There is no right or wrong, but you can tell which families would be glued to the bedside, if only they could be. We have families who have dropped off tape recorders of their voices — talking, singing, saying prayers — anything that might provide some comfort.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I go in and out of my patient\u2019s room several times a day. Putting on PPE and taking it off, my mind racing through the steps every time.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve found myself thinking about an ICU assignment I recently did in Nova Scotia, just weeks pre-COVID. We were treating a patient who was palliative and had tuberculosis several decades earlier. We needed three negative samples in order to clear the need for wearing N95 masks. We had two samples but the patient was just too sick to get the third. Over the course of that patient\u2019s four or five days in the hospital, I was thinking back, we probably went through at least a hundred masks between the care team and the family. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I now get one N95 mask per shift that I have to reuse. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I put it in a little bag in between wearing it and that does make me feel a bit nervous. There is still such a lack of personal protective equipment. It\u2019s hard to imagine where we would be if our hospitals were overwhelmed like they have been in New York where it\u2019s one nurse to five COVID patients. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t worry about myself. But I live in a 600 square foot condo with my husband who has been following physical distancing measures to a T, so my biggest fear is coming home and making him sick when he has been doing everything right. We know what we\u2019re signing ourselves up for, but in a way our immediate family gets signed up too and putting them at risk is a burden we live with. 
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hear that Ontario has hit the peak of COVID cases but I can\u2019t shake the feeling of \u2018is it going to get worse?\u2019 Are we going to have another wave? As nurses on the frontlines in the hospital, we don\u2019t have any special information, so we\u2019re waiting too.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Victoria Zefkic, RN, BNSc, MPH and Think Research Clinical Knowledge Translation Specialist Why I joined the frontline fight against COVID-19 For me it wasn\u2019t really a choice. Nurses were being called out of retirement. 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