Guest Columnist

DEAN GUNNING, RN IV

ICU Night Shift Charge Nurse

Methodist Hospital | Texsan

“It’s been over one year since the first patient with COVID-19 came to Texsan. It’s been a year filled with so many changes and challenges for everyone, but especially for the nurses taking care of patients with COVID-19. I really believe my time in the military helped prepare me to get through this incredible time, and I am grateful for the life experiences I’ve had that helped me care for my patients and my work family. I served 20 years in the Air Force, including a year in Desert Storm. The military teaches you how to manage stress. I believe the key to that is the culture and structure it provides. The military is a big family that respects each other and takes care of each other. That’s how it feels at Texsan. I’ve worked here for 17 years, and we probably spend more time with our work family than our actual family. We make it a point to ask how each other is doing and pay attention when someone isn’t doing ok. We know when something is wrong, and we try to see if there is something we can do to help. It makes a difference knowing that we have each other’s back.

Within a few weeks of the start of the pandemic, we converted at least half of the ICU to a COVID unit.

It was stressful at first, because we didn’t know what to expect. The PPE protocols were very strict, and we had to watch each other with a checklist to make sure we didn’t skip a step. Now we aren’t scared of it. We know exactly how to put on the PPE and take it off without the checklist. We’ve gotten more comfortable with the procedures. Then we had to evolve how we cared for patients with COVID-19 who couldn’t have any visitors. We spend a lot more time with our patients now than ever before because they don’t have anyone else to be with them. We are helping patients FaceTime with their families. We are trying to keep their family members updated over the phone and to give them hope. It’s tougher because a lot of family members are stressed out that they can’t be there. People get more agitated over the phone, and it is harder to calm them down than when they are here in person. It’s harder to give them peace of mind over the phone. It does get tiresome. The workload is harder, and the staff is more stressed out. But at the end of the shift, you have to put work behind you and enjoy your family, get out and do something that you enjoy doing. For me, that’s hanging out with my little grandson – he’s my little buddy. We go outside and do some gardening and play. We are teaching him some exercises and that’s pretty funny. Watching a three-year-old learn to do jumping jacks will definitely put a smile on your face.

I’m definitely proud of our team and how we have managed to care for our patients and their families during such a difficult year. I hope we can all lean on our Methodist family to continue caring for our patients and each other.”

GUEST COLUMNIST

BELINDA URDIALES, RN

ER Registered Nurse

Methodist Hospital | Metropolitan

“Driving to work one day, I saw a billboard that read, ‘What inspires you?’ My immediate thought was courage. I wondered if my quick response was because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I knew it had to be something deeper. So, I began my personal reasoning processes—why courage? I took a long, introspective look to see where courage came from. The Merriam-Webster defines ‘courage’ as mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty. From this list, the word ‘strength’ stood out.

From this, I debated that if courage derived from strength, then, where exactly do we get strength? For me, this was an easy answer—trust.

My investigation into trust began more than a decade ago. The memory of it remains seared in my mind but actually closer to my heart. He was 22-years old, and I was 2 months into my emergency nursing career. Shift report stated that he was simply staying over in our emergency department until an ICU bed became available. From across the unit, I could see he was sleeping. I walked over to his bedside that cold, sunny morning with a fresh warm blanket in hand and began to greet him in my usual manner. ‘Good morning, my name is…’ but before I was able to finish my introduction, he rolled onto his back and smiled. His smile stopped me from what I was doing.

In helpless astonishment, I marveled at the sincerity, and warmth that had permeated from his smile. I had seen that same trusting smile on my own children many times over as I had awakened them from sleep on many mornings.

I could not help myself from smiling in return. The words of a previous nursing instructor echoed in my mind; there is no other profession that will allow an individual to give a total stranger complete trust with their lives. You must respect that. My patient’s eyes never

opened that fateful morning: he simply rolled over, arched his back, with arms stretching wide, and cheerfully muttered, ‘good morning.’ He seemed to have quickly fallen back to sleep.

His smile was gone.

I called out his name with no response. I forcefully rubbed on his sternum calling out his name a little louder this time. Again, no response. He was no longer breathing. I called out for help as I desperately tried to palpate a pulse. No pulse. I reached for the code blue button on a nearby wall, and within minutes the ER physician was at bedside asking loudly, 'why aren’t you ambuing the patient?' I stifled my tears and insecurities as I tried to stay focused on performing procedures that needed priority in that moment. The E.D. Team on duty that morning were at my side long before the physician had been but had gone unnoticed. They had already sensed my overwhelming anxiety when they heard me frantically calling out my patient’s name. They worked together quickly, efficiently and effortlessly, picking up from where I had lagged and faltered. Textbook cases are never examples of real-life scenarios. During my orientation, I had seen many codes in our ED before, but this was different. He was my patient. I couldn’t stop feeling as inadequate as my early days of nursing school. Unfortunately, my 22-year-old did not survive. The charge nurse pulled me aside and reassured me that I had done everything I could. This was the moment I understood and appreciated just how precious the profession of nursing truly is.

Since that fateful day, over 20 years ago, many surveys have proven nursing as the most trusted of all professions.

As a healthcare team, we are daily witnesses to this trust. We see it on the smiles of first time parents in L/D, even to the stifled but appreciative tears generated by family members who know we have done our best in our ICUs and EDs.

Trust brings out courage, which ultimately brings out courageous love. Courageous love is the ability to lay down one’s life for the sake of another. This is what nurses do the moment we clock in for what we think of as “just another workday.” We leave behind our lives for 8-12 hours for the sake of others.

Trust in each other; trust in ourselves—this is my daily inspiration."