As cases of COVID-19 skyrocketed in early spring, medical professionals from across the country traveled to the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic, New York City, to help support overwhelmed hospitals and staff. In this article, we profile two nurses-Caitlin Doane and Brent Whitaker-who came to the city in April and spent four weeks working on the front lines. To hear their full stories, listen to their podcast interviews with AJN clinical editor Betsy Todd at https://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/pages/podcastepisodes.aspx?podcastid=3.
CAITLIN DOANE
"I'd been watching social media and seeing former colleagues and classmates who were working in New York City. [They were] very, very, burnt out and tired. I couldn't turn down the opportunity to go and help them," says Doane, an ED nurse at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, New York. She volunteered to join a medical mission organized by her hospital, which sent two buses of nurses, physicians, and other providers to work downstate. Doane was accepted for the mission on a Monday and departed just two days later.
Upon their arrival in the city, Doane and her colleagues immediately noticed the absence of its usual bustling energy. "The streets were empty. It was scary and sad at the same time to see the isolation that was going on," she recalls. "At night in our room we wouldn't hear noises in the city that you would normally hear-we would hear just sirens."
After a day of orientation at their assigned hospital, the visiting clinicians were assigned to units. "I bonded immediately with the unit I was sent to," Doane says. It had both COVID and non-COVID patients, pediatric patients and adults, including some trauma and surgical patients. Managing their widely varying needs proved to be a struggle-one that, as she notes, was a new experience for everyone. To confront the daily challenges wrought by the pandemic, the hospital staff and the visiting workers banded together in a way Doane found deeply moving. "It was truly remarkable. I came with a supportive team, and I joined a supportive team."
Many of Doane's patients were hospitalized for the entire duration of her stay-and some hadn't seen their families in more than a month because of new policies prohibiting visitation. She brought her personal cell phone to the isolated patients so they could video chat with their loved ones. She also developed a close connection with some of her teenage patients, who struggled being alone while seriously ill. A mother of two teenagers herself, Doane "took on some of the 'mom' role" for her young patients, helping them cope. Given the absence of family at the bedside, "every provider, every nurse, treated patients as family," she says of the staff on her unit. "We were advocates for their families as well, reassuring them that we were there to support their loved ones."
It was Doane's own family-many of whom are first responders, including her husband-that got her through the four grueling weeks in New York City. Despite their worries, they understood her desire to help. "They supported me the entire time I was down there," she says. "They were my rock, and they made everything so much easier from home."
On days off, Doane and fellow visiting workers passed the time walking through the quiet streets. They ate takeout from as many restaurants as they could. "Most of our meals were ordered out. The hospital was very generous in supplying some-and there were many, many donations to the hospital-but we also made it a point to try to invest in local businesses to keep them afloat," she explains. "We really wanted to make sure we were there for the city."
Doane calls participating in the medical mission "life changing" and says she has no regrets about her decision to make the trip. "It was an amazing experience to be able to be there for these patients. I'm just a small part of their story, but they're a huge part of mine."
BRENT WHITAKER
"For me, the big push to leave Ohio and come to New York was that desire of wanting to be able to do something, wanting to help. It's the reason I became a nurse-my desire to help people as much as I can," says Whitaker, a cardiovascular ICU nurse manager at the Cleveland Clinic. After Ohio's first COVID-19 cases popped up in March, he and his colleagues spent weeks preparing to receive an influx of patients, but the anticipated chaos didn't happen. "We got to a point where we felt that the units were well prepared, that we were seeing numbers we were going to sustain for some time, which were very low, so we could offer up some help." Whitaker signed up for a Cleveland Clinic-coordinated trip to work in New York City, joining 14 other nurses and 10 physicians.
The contrast between the state of the pandemic in Ohio and New York was "striking," he says. While the situation at his assigned New York City hospital was generally what he had expected it to be, he was taken aback by the uniformity of the COVID-19 patient population. "What was most surprising was to see the same type of patient bed after bed after bed-intubated and sedated. That is something very unique," he recalls. "We came in a little bit later in the response, so what we saw were a lot of patients who had been there for quite some time."
Coming from a busy hospital and well versed in coping with the challenges of a heavy workload, Whitaker and his teammates quickly made themselves useful. They approached their monthlong mission with a sense of seasoned adaptability (he describes the group's attitude as "Just give me some work to do; I'll be able to handle it"). From a practical perspective, the main challenge they encountered was surprisingly mundane: learning to work with an unfamiliar electronic charting system.
Still, the emotional strain of the experience was unavoidable. Whitaker was struck by the eerie silence of the city streets and noted that had it not been for group dinners with his colleagues at their hotel, he might not have seen a single unmasked face the entire month. "I think that [isolation] really does weigh on our human psyche," he says. "You can only smile with your eyes so much." Like Doane, he relied on his family-especially his wife and two children-to lift his spirits from afar. "Their positivity, their ability to make the sacrifice along with me, has been really enduring. And it never wavered."
Whitaker and his teammates spent their free time exploring New York City as much as they could. They went jogging in small groups, wearing masks, and rode bikes to see famous landmarks. And they received warm welcomes and words of thanks from locals on the street who noticed their scrubs or Cleveland Clinic apparel. "New Yorkers aren't known for that. But we really received this overall, "Thank you for being here," "Thank you for coming." It was clear, he says, "just how grateful everyday citizens are to have the help. That, to us, highlights the really rough experience, the scary experience, that they went through."-Diane Szulecki, editor