ICU

At this point, things are so disheartening for so many people. The range of nurses’ stories is so wide and varied, from OR nurses being essentially laid off due to no elective surgeries happening, to nurses being offered a lot of money to come to New York City to work.

New York State has taken the unprecedented step of merging all of its 200 hospitals into one system (New York State hospital system consolidation ).

There’s a lot of death. One nurse told a story of how she had 10 patients in one shift and 7 of them died. In some hospitals, there is a different kind of rapid response team called, specifically for CVOID19 patients, and they are being called sometimes just minutes apart on different units throughout the hospital.

Also, nurses are working with their colleagues who end up being patients in their same units; one nurse told of their nursing supervisor being hospitalized in their own ICU, and they conjectured the supervisor most likely would pass away there.

There’s a lot of understaffing and over-working, including on the medical-surgical units. Part of this is because nurses themselves are becoming ill and unable to come to work.

Some nurses are actually more frightened to work in the medical-surgical units because they have a lack of PPE, and all patients are presumed to be COVID19 negative. Of course, when tests come back days later, the nurses discover that they worked with these COVID19 positive patients without proper PPE. There are also many issues around HIPPA and staff not being able to find out the COVID19 status of the patients they worked with previously.

Another nurse relayed this story: he works twelve-hour shifts on a medical-surgical floor, and their usual patient load now runs from 12-15 patients, the only real charting they really do is vital signs and meds. This is possible because NYC has suspended a lot of normal operations when it comes to providing care as per the governor’s laws:

“A massive section of regulations on the “minimum standards” governing hospitals — dealing with everything from patients’ rights to the maintaining of records — has been suspended ‘to the extent necessary to maintain the public health with respect to treatment or containment of individuals with or suspected to have COVID-19’.” (read about all of the laws suspended) .

This nurse cries after every shift, and he stated his tears are so different from before, in part due to his utter exhaustion. His family and friends want him to quit, they are worried about his health, but he stated he can’t quit now, they need him too much.

Nurses are asking about ramifications of quitting their jobs; some claim that they have been threatened that they will be reported to their board of nursing for disciplinary action (this is not the reportable offense of walking out and abandoning patients, rather for resigning their position). While these threats are likely idle, some nurses are still fearful of losing their licenses.

One nurse states that she works in a COVID19 only ICU unit. She says it’s mostly completely staffed by RNs: they have no NPs, PAs, Residents, Techs, or Housekeepers. Nurses and ICU Attending and Intensivists care for the patients. Med Surg nurses act as techs and assist the ICU nurses.

Recruiting: There is still a lot of recruiting going to bring nurses to NYC. One new graduate nurse (recently licensed, with no work experience) posted on social media about being offered to be “trained” to work in the ICU in NYC. All of her travel and lodging would be covered. She would be required to work 21 days, 12-hour shifts, with no days off. The majority of the experienced nurses tried to set her straight about why this was a really bad idea, but we have no idea if she proceeded or not.

It’s not just NYC: We now have a 54-year-old nurse in Michigan who died, Lisa Ewald.

Unfortunately, nurse Ewald may have had some issues with initially being tested by her workplace, Herny Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan. She was likely exposed on March 24, received her positive test on March 30, and passed away on April 3. She died alone in her home. (Lisa Ewald’s story).

Rest in Peace Nurse Ewald.

Meanwhile, more than 700 Henry Ford employees have tested positive for COVID19; 500 of the positive tests are nurses. (Henry Ford COVID19)

The field of nursing will be forever changed by this.

I have been intrigued lately with what nurses are saying in public arenas and how it reflects our practices. Many nurses blog or journal about their work, and while some of it serves to accurately portray the workplace issues we face, some of it may also be damaging to our profession and our image, serving to keep us stuck and in need of emancipation versus moving us toward freedom and autonomy as a profession.

Take the following blog post, created by a nurse known only as Brownie3, which seems at first glance to portray some of the issues we face as nursing. http://brownie83.hubpages.com/hub/10-Things-Nurses-Dont-Want-You-to-Know

Despite it’s title of “10 Things Nurses Don’t Want You to Know”, the blog reflects a keen desire to begin to inform and partner with patients, creating a venue for discussing with the public what nurses do. Why is it that we would perhaps not want our patients to know our profession and our challenges better? In many ways the blog clearly reflects the face of modern nurse as somewhat distanced and harried, un-empowered, and it provides background for why we must act in a reductionistic manner with our patients; we simply have too many demands, too much stress to “perform”, and legal constraints, such as on the use of patient names. The issues with pain medication and the nurse’s desire for the patient’s to be “sincere” in their needs reads very judgmental. However, my greatest concern is that the blog fails to portray what I believe we charged with as nurses: to provide caring, non-judgmental, presence at the bedside that supports the patient’s healing journey. There is no inkling of the idea that the nurse is there to share the journey and no clue to the idea that nurses are guided in their decisions by nursing theory and evidence based practices. Of course, as one of my colleagues pointed out, this is just one person’s experience, but when the statements are broadly placed to all of nursing, it becomes a concern for all of us professionally.

The next entry I looked at this week was from an intensive care nurse who wrote the blog as a fairly new graduate nurse. Diary of an Intensive Care Nurse begins to reflect the many troublesome issues nurses face in providing care in the highly technological world of the ICU: http://nypost.com/2012/12/09/diary-of-an-intensive-care-nurse/

While Nurse McConnell makes a clear portrayal of the issues in ICU around the country, there is something lacking here. One thing missing is the use of evidence to back up some of these statements; for instance there is some great evidence out there about what harm the ICU does, but it is not included here and in some ways the personal experience, while very valuable, could be better validated with use of data. Also, there is a lack of a solution; while the nurse calls for change in ICU settings, what and how that change might be is unclear. Again, there is plenty of evidence to suggest earlier palliative care and use of hospice at end of life greatly change end of life outcomes, and many more patients are opting for these services. My thought is that perhaps the writer is not yet keenly aware that these options exist and we should be striving toward greater use of these options for all people, or incorporating some of these more holistic and caring approaches into ICU type care.

While we want all nurses to have a voice, we also need to support one another in developing the best ways to express our concerns for the profession, and our plans for creating change. One thing I think is for certain: as nurses, we all should ideally support greater levels of education for our nurses, so that every nurses understands how evidence and theory drive practice, they each grasp the ethical implications of their practices, and they all can be supported in meeting their true call to nursing. The greatest joy in our profession is in the supporting of each patient’s healing capacity across the lifespan and through the death experience.