Dublin Core
Title
A Registered Nurse’s Perspective on the First Days of the Coronavirus Pandemic
Subject
COVID-19
Description
An essay analyzing a registered nurses perspective on COVID-19
Creator
Kenneth Morrissey
Date
10/4/2020
Contributor
An unnamed registered nurse
Rights
All rights to this work belong to Kenneth Morrissey
Format
A word document
Language
English
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
A Registered Nurse’s Perspective on the First Days of the Coronavirus Pandemic
I interviewed a registered nurse in order to get the perspective of someone in the medical field on the coronavirus. Experts on infectious diseases Nasim Lotfinejad, Alexandra Peters, and Didier Pittet wrote Hand hygiene and the novel coronavirus pandemic: the role of healthcare workers about the difficulties of being a nurse during the pandemic, “Their frequent exposure to pathogens, long working hours, stressful work environment and fatigue predispose them to acquire or transmit infections such as COVID-19.” (Lotfinejad, Peters, and Pittet 776) Due to the nature of their jobs, nurses are put at extreme risk of catching infectious diseases like COVID-19. But yet, their jobs are essential for any society to overcome the pandemic., I wanted to tell the story of someone who had to put so much on the line just to do their job and help people. The nurse that I choose to interview, who choose to remain anonymous, is a fifty seven year old woman who lives in central New Jersey. She has spent the past thirty-five years in active practice as a registered nurse. She has worked twenty-eight years in a hospital, five years teaching nurses, and the past two years in a private medical manufacturing company. Even though she no longer works in a hospital, she is still at risk of catching COVID-19 through her interactions with people who come in to donate blood. Her experiences and perspectives on the pandemic are invaluable for our understanding of how the wider public is dealing with this deadly disease.
The very first thing that I asked this registered nurse was her initial reaction to the COVID-19. She told me that, as a medical professional, she was aware of the virus from almost the very beginning. Before the COVID-19 virus came to America, she thought that the virus would be able to be contained by the United States’ government. She compared COVID-19 dismissively to past disease “panics” such as SARs and Ebola. She and I displayed an attitude toward COVID-19 during the first days of the pandemic that historian David S. Jones argues in COVID‐19, History, and Humility helped the virus spread. He specifically wrote, “…too many people in too many countries were content to downplay the threat until it was too late…we now grapple with the consequences of our complacency and wonder how it will all end.” (Jones 372) As there has not been a pandemic of this magnitude since the Spanish Flu which occurred nearly one hundred years ago, people did not know just how severe COVID-19’s effects would be on the country. Many assumed, such as this registered nurse and her interviewer, that it would pass through the United States without much incident due to prior disease panics. As Jones described, this complacency ultimately created the conditions where the virus thrived. When we finally did grasp the severity of the COVID-19 virus, the virus had already affected hundreds of thousands in America.
As a medical professional, I thought it would be important to ask her what precautions she and her medical manufacturing company took during the early days of the pandemic to prevent the spread of COVID-19 amongst staff and customers. Lotfinejad, Peters, and Pittet wrote that, “Most healthcare-acquired infections could be avoided by well-trained nurses with appropriate hand hygiene compliance and use of protective equipment.” (Lotfinejad, Peters, and Pittet 776) Through the use of protective gear, it is possible for nurses and other health professionals to prevent the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19. Before the pandemic, at this registered nurse’s job they would normally wear a white lab coat, plastic gloves, and a clear face shield for hygienic reasons. When the virus was first declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, her superiors gathered all employees and told them that the personal protective equipment that they were already wearing would be sufficient to protect them from the virus. About a month after the virus was declared a pandemic, a couple of people working at her job in their early twenties had become sick with the virus. This development worried the registered nurse, as she was an older woman and knew the risks that the virus presented to someone her age. As an extra precautionary measure, her job has since required her to wear an N-95 mask in addition to all of the normal required gear when dealing with customers. This registered nurse’s experiences show that everyone’s understanding of the protective measures needed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has evolved since the beginning of the pandemic.
In order to close things out, I asked the registered nurse about her overall thoughts about the coronavirus pandemic. She seemed flabbergasted at all that had happened since those first days of the pandemic. In order to illustrate her feelings, she compared her experience during the pandemic to the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack. She said during the attack, she was very afraid, but her life more or less returned to normal during the next couple of days. Whereas with the pandemic, she had to alter the very ways in which she lived her life. She expressed extreme frustration that she had difficulty getting something as simple as groceries from her local convenience store. The frustration that this registered nurse is experiencing is something that many people from all around the world are feeling right now. Beckie Supiano gives a good summary of this feeling in Why Is Zoom So Exhausting?, “…so many people want to project to others that they’re doing business as usual, even while the news is full of “images of death, of illness, of economic downturn and collapse.””(Supiano 7) Many people just want things to return to the version of “normal” that they had before the pandemic. The general public will certainly remember this feeling of frustration for a very long time. Maybe that memory of frustration will motivate the public to take the next potential pandemic more seriously right from the very beginning, so that pandemic never get nearly as severe as the current coronavirus pandemic. But this visage of the future can only occur can only occur if people take the right lessons from the first days of the coronavirus pandemic.
This interview was conducted in person and recorded on an iPad and iPhone on October 2nd, 2020
Work Cited
Jones DS. COVID‐19, “History, and Humility. Centaurus.” 2020;62(2):370-380. doi:10.1111/1600-0498.12296
Lotfinejad N, Peters A, Pittet D. “Hand Hygiene and the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic: The Role of Healthcare Workers.” The Journal of hospital infection. 2020;105(4):776-777. doi:10.1016/j.jhin.2020.03.017
Morrissey, Kenneth F, and a Registered Nurse. “Interview of a Registered Nurse about the Early Days of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” 2 Oct. 2020.
Supiano, Beckie. “Why Is Zoom So Exhausting?” Chronicle.com, The Chronicle of Education, 22 July 2020, www.chronicle.com/article/why-is-zoom-so-exhausting/.
I interviewed a registered nurse in order to get the perspective of someone in the medical field on the coronavirus. Experts on infectious diseases Nasim Lotfinejad, Alexandra Peters, and Didier Pittet wrote Hand hygiene and the novel coronavirus pandemic: the role of healthcare workers about the difficulties of being a nurse during the pandemic, “Their frequent exposure to pathogens, long working hours, stressful work environment and fatigue predispose them to acquire or transmit infections such as COVID-19.” (Lotfinejad, Peters, and Pittet 776) Due to the nature of their jobs, nurses are put at extreme risk of catching infectious diseases like COVID-19. But yet, their jobs are essential for any society to overcome the pandemic., I wanted to tell the story of someone who had to put so much on the line just to do their job and help people. The nurse that I choose to interview, who choose to remain anonymous, is a fifty seven year old woman who lives in central New Jersey. She has spent the past thirty-five years in active practice as a registered nurse. She has worked twenty-eight years in a hospital, five years teaching nurses, and the past two years in a private medical manufacturing company. Even though she no longer works in a hospital, she is still at risk of catching COVID-19 through her interactions with people who come in to donate blood. Her experiences and perspectives on the pandemic are invaluable for our understanding of how the wider public is dealing with this deadly disease.
The very first thing that I asked this registered nurse was her initial reaction to the COVID-19. She told me that, as a medical professional, she was aware of the virus from almost the very beginning. Before the COVID-19 virus came to America, she thought that the virus would be able to be contained by the United States’ government. She compared COVID-19 dismissively to past disease “panics” such as SARs and Ebola. She and I displayed an attitude toward COVID-19 during the first days of the pandemic that historian David S. Jones argues in COVID‐19, History, and Humility helped the virus spread. He specifically wrote, “…too many people in too many countries were content to downplay the threat until it was too late…we now grapple with the consequences of our complacency and wonder how it will all end.” (Jones 372) As there has not been a pandemic of this magnitude since the Spanish Flu which occurred nearly one hundred years ago, people did not know just how severe COVID-19’s effects would be on the country. Many assumed, such as this registered nurse and her interviewer, that it would pass through the United States without much incident due to prior disease panics. As Jones described, this complacency ultimately created the conditions where the virus thrived. When we finally did grasp the severity of the COVID-19 virus, the virus had already affected hundreds of thousands in America.
As a medical professional, I thought it would be important to ask her what precautions she and her medical manufacturing company took during the early days of the pandemic to prevent the spread of COVID-19 amongst staff and customers. Lotfinejad, Peters, and Pittet wrote that, “Most healthcare-acquired infections could be avoided by well-trained nurses with appropriate hand hygiene compliance and use of protective equipment.” (Lotfinejad, Peters, and Pittet 776) Through the use of protective gear, it is possible for nurses and other health professionals to prevent the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19. Before the pandemic, at this registered nurse’s job they would normally wear a white lab coat, plastic gloves, and a clear face shield for hygienic reasons. When the virus was first declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, her superiors gathered all employees and told them that the personal protective equipment that they were already wearing would be sufficient to protect them from the virus. About a month after the virus was declared a pandemic, a couple of people working at her job in their early twenties had become sick with the virus. This development worried the registered nurse, as she was an older woman and knew the risks that the virus presented to someone her age. As an extra precautionary measure, her job has since required her to wear an N-95 mask in addition to all of the normal required gear when dealing with customers. This registered nurse’s experiences show that everyone’s understanding of the protective measures needed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has evolved since the beginning of the pandemic.
In order to close things out, I asked the registered nurse about her overall thoughts about the coronavirus pandemic. She seemed flabbergasted at all that had happened since those first days of the pandemic. In order to illustrate her feelings, she compared her experience during the pandemic to the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack. She said during the attack, she was very afraid, but her life more or less returned to normal during the next couple of days. Whereas with the pandemic, she had to alter the very ways in which she lived her life. She expressed extreme frustration that she had difficulty getting something as simple as groceries from her local convenience store. The frustration that this registered nurse is experiencing is something that many people from all around the world are feeling right now. Beckie Supiano gives a good summary of this feeling in Why Is Zoom So Exhausting?, “…so many people want to project to others that they’re doing business as usual, even while the news is full of “images of death, of illness, of economic downturn and collapse.””(Supiano 7) Many people just want things to return to the version of “normal” that they had before the pandemic. The general public will certainly remember this feeling of frustration for a very long time. Maybe that memory of frustration will motivate the public to take the next potential pandemic more seriously right from the very beginning, so that pandemic never get nearly as severe as the current coronavirus pandemic. But this visage of the future can only occur can only occur if people take the right lessons from the first days of the coronavirus pandemic.
This interview was conducted in person and recorded on an iPad and iPhone on October 2nd, 2020
Work Cited
Jones DS. COVID‐19, “History, and Humility. Centaurus.” 2020;62(2):370-380. doi:10.1111/1600-0498.12296
Lotfinejad N, Peters A, Pittet D. “Hand Hygiene and the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic: The Role of Healthcare Workers.” The Journal of hospital infection. 2020;105(4):776-777. doi:10.1016/j.jhin.2020.03.017
Morrissey, Kenneth F, and a Registered Nurse. “Interview of a Registered Nurse about the Early Days of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” 2 Oct. 2020.
Supiano, Beckie. “Why Is Zoom So Exhausting?” Chronicle.com, The Chronicle of Education, 22 July 2020, www.chronicle.com/article/why-is-zoom-so-exhausting/.
Original Format
Word Document