From left: Trish Campbell, RN; Jocelyn Sese, MSN, RN; Lauren Fernald-Colavita, RN; Kerrin Sleeper, RN; Satchell-Lee Tyrell, RN; and Jovy Castillon, RN.
Jocelyn Sese, MSN, RN, Director of Patient Care Services at Mount Sinai Morningside, has been keeping a blog, called COVID-19 Diary: The Heartaches and the Small Victories. “This is not just my story,” she writes. “This is also a snapshot of my department’s journey through a pandemic, with all the heartaches and the small victories. Nobody comes out of this war unscathed.” Here are some excerpts:
January 25: China is far away; the danger of the coronavirus that devastated Wuhan is far away. (Or so, I thought). The hospital cautions us to prepare, but there is a general sense that it’s just like the flu. The CDC says that the flu killed more people than the Wuhan virus. I thought, we’re safe here in America. Hey, even POTUS downplayed Wuhan. Life goes on.
February 28: We received about three patients with fevers, cough, positive travel history and they were just mildly sick. It’s not bad, I assured myself, I assured my staff. Who was I kidding? I was scared.
March 15: It’s a Saturday spent at work. The Emergency Department is getting overcrowded with patients worried about their symptoms. We have the worried wells, but there are more patients coming with respiratory distress. We opened the ambulatory clinic on the second floor with the physician assistants and ambulatory clinic staff seeing those with mild-acuity symptoms. The ED leadership had a nice plan on how we will surge up: We meant to start allocating some rooms for COVID patients in the Main ED for Phase 1, then will advance to Phase 2 with additional rooms that can hold the COVID patients, then Phase 3 using Pediatrics and Eval. It’s only Saturday, and we’re already in Phase 2. Out of the 30 boarders in the ED, only two were not COVID. Now we see patients presenting with abdominal pains and testing positive for COVID.
It was a long, tiring day. I ordered pizza for the staff, and they all came running to the conference room. I sat down to eat my ham with pineapple pizza pie, but did not have the strength to finish the whole thing. I had the feeling that things are going to get worse, then worst, before it becomes better. May God bless us all.
Emergency Department RNs, from left, Sharon Lafferty, Madeleine Rattray, Larissa Leonardo, Kerrin Sleeper, and Corina Wolfer.
March 20: I am the nursing director, but I do not do direct bedside care like these brave men and women do. But I sure do my very best to support them, securing more staff, more equipment, more supplies. I spend 10 to 12 hours in the hospital five days a week, and then I’m on call for any emergencies. The nursing directors are conducting Incident Management huddles at 8:30 am, even on Saturdays and Sundays. Even with all of these, it will certainly not compare with the higher risk that the bedside staff face every single day.
I am both proud of and worried for the all the direct-care providers, the nurses, doctors, techs, respiratory therapists. Both the front liners and the last recourse. They deserve all the glory and all the tributes for a job well done and for what they keep on doing. These are dark times, and the staff just keeps on rallying on in the middle of the war against COVID-19. They are awesome, so inspiring.
April 3: It’s the worst of times, but I see the staff stepping up. A physician assistant brought an iPad to the room so the patient and the self-quarantined family can talk to each other. The doctors slumped on their seats as they held their phones to their ears, as they fielded questions from the worried families. The nurses and techs gowned up to prepare a patient to the morgue. At 3pm, the techs gathered around after huddle to say their prayers. They are the heroes of these uncertain times. And to survive, I see them supporting and being kind to each other.
April 5: It takes courage to go where nobody else wants to go. It takes dedication to leave our families behind. It takes resilience to bounce back from a shift of heartaches and frustration to come back another day. It takes someone special and amazing to be in the front lines of this war. The nurse represents ALL the health care workers in the middle of this fight against COVID. Kudos to all the nurses, doctors, PAs, NPs, techs, registrars, respiratory therapists, transporters, EMS workers, Security, EVS workers, engineering, IT support, and all the administrative leadership staff who work behind the scenes.
April 10: I am glad I was able to witness a patient’s discharge; he is a COVID survivor. The patient broke into a wide grin as he was met with a chorus of well-wishes and boisterous applause at the #MountSinaiMorningside lobby. It is an honor and privilege to be among a group of people who cheered this patient. Much as he appreciated the warm send-off, I felt similarly blessed. It was a great feeling, a much-needed pick-me-up. There was encouraging news about the downward trending admission rates, but I couldn’t shake a lingering sadness earlier because of some losses of people I know. At that moment, I was energized, I felt joyful seeing the patient’s grateful smile. I caught his eyes, and I felt my own tears fall as he mouthed. “Thank You.” I never took care of him, but he was everybody’s patient at that time. Sir, Thank you.
The team at Mount Sinai Morningside was saluted by firefighters and other first responders.