Life of a COVID-19 Nurse at Harborview’s ICU | UW Medicine

Catherine Haylee Crist Rebecca Kathleen can't exactly remember the exact moment I heard a co-ed 19 I was supposed to take a chip with my son to Japan more more news it's like we'll be fine and then it just seemed to explode initially we thought we just might need eight beds and then as we started getting into the Cova ICU it became apparent that we were gonna have to stretch these patients have to come in here and they're super sick so you have to put yourself in their shoes to feel what they feel you're in a hospital with strangers all around you telling you to breathe telling you to cough and your restraint and tied down Hey Joe this is breezy in kovat ICU and we're getting ready to soup another patient and kinda like them for ECMO I think day two of me working my first week in the Kovac ICU I just knew that this was gonna get a lot bigger and it could get really scary here so I called my friend that night and my son was on a plane by 10 again the next morning he's in Hawaii right now and he's been there since March 11th yep I usually work seven nights in a row the day before I have to take a long nap to make sure I can mentally switch and function appropriately oh and then you can get through your 12-hour shift you're trying your best all the little tricks that you've known that I've worked on patients that have had the really sick lungs in the past but these tricks are not working people are getting sicker whenever you put a breathing tube into somebody for the first time you risk having droplets come out there's definitely a risk you do it always tell them what I'm doing even if they are sedated I always believe it people can hear you and you need to talk to them I'm gonna give you this mat it's for this you just verbalize it out loud you hold people's hands when you sit there with them talk about something that has nothing to do with the Kovan 19 you just ask them about them so I get to know them their families because they can't talk to their family your that bridge and all you want to do is make sure that this person can go home if you're already at the max level of support that you can give and their oxygen levels are dropping there's really not much you can do except just let the family know and can you imagine holding up a pipe add to somebody who's intubated really sick and hearing their family tell them goodbye absolutely heartbreaking I'm gonna bring the camera over to him okay tears are coming down your face mean you're human this sucks and we had a co-worker very young we don't know if she got actually exposed at work but she started feeling sick and she took herself off the schedule doing it home like a lot of people do who test positive but it just came to the point where she couldn't do that hey sweetie you're in the hospital okay you're at Harborview we're gonna take good care of you she was with us for seven days on that breathing machine she would write on a board being a nurse she would always want to know what her vent settings were and I think we were all standing outside the room when we knew that we were gonna take that breathing tube out and we were all so scared we all held our breath she had that tube out and she was fine we finally won one we did not let kovat win we won until we get a vaccine there is no way that this can't be part of our everyday life we're gonna adapt to it we're gonna learn from it and we're gonna grow from it [Music] I've never been so tired when I get home I am physically mentally exhausted that's when I either cry on my way home I also take a walk down to the water when I lose patience it's kind of a Hawaiian ritual and then just say goodbye [Music] as a nurse I fear getting sick especially since now my son is not here he texts me all the time and says mom please don't get sick it's a possibility this disease could take any one of us at any time and I'd be a fool to think that I was immune I knew what I was getting into and I chose it I was meant to be a nurse

Channel: UW Medicine

Views: 272,270

Rating: 4.896215 out of 5

Keywords: coronavirus, corona, covid-19, nurse, icu, medicine, safety, covid nurse, pandemic, coronavirus pandemic, coronavirus update, coronavirus news, covid, covid symptoms

Id: aBoaCHKJKd8

Length: 5min 43sec (343 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020