Nursing During A Pandemic

A year from now, what do you want to say you’ve accomplished at Rosemont? What about three years from now?

A year from now, the Fall of 2021, we will have just launched the College’s year-long Centennial Celebration. I want that year-long initiative to inspire hope for the College’s next 100 years, and to fill everyone who is touched by Rosemont with tremendous pride for this wonderful institution.

Three years from now, I would love to say that I, and those with whom I work in College Relations, have increased the participation in the life of the College by our graduates of the Undergraduate College from the 1980s and 1990s. As is the case at many colleges across the country, those alumnae don’t take part in Rosemont’s programs and events or donate to the College as faithfully and regularly as the alumnae who came before them. There is a documented generational difference in the way they view their relationship with their

Rosemont’s new Global & Civic Engagement Committee (GCEC) held several events during Civic Engagement Week from October 12-16.

Civic Engagement Week at Rosemont kicked off with a voter registration drive. More than 45 students from across campus including members of the Student Government Association, men’s and women’s basketball teams, and softball team helped register students to vote and talked to them about creating a voting plan. alma mater. As one of them myself, I know that our alumnae from the 1980s and 1990s have great affinity for Rosemont. I want to work to turn that love for the College into active engagement with Rosemont.

What book are you currently reading?

I always read more than one book at a time. What I pick up on any given day depends on my mood. Thank goodness for my Kindle. Right now, it is The Nickle Boys by Colon Whitehead (with my Rosemont Alumni Book Club), A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues: The Uses of Philosophy in Everday Life by Andre Comte-Sponville (a recommendation from a dear friend), The Beneficiary by Janny Scott (because it is about the Main Line), and Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner (just because).

Where can we find you when you’re not at work?

Spending time with my family, practicing yoga, walking in my neighborhood, serving on two Committees for the Union

The committee also hosted a virtual Lunch and Learn session on October 16. “We had a great turnout for the Lunch & Learn, with President Boyers joining in as well,” said Burns. “We talked about some of the topics that would have been addressed during the debate, racial injustices affecting our nation and how they affect our students.”

The Global & Civic Engagement Committee(GCEC), formerly known as the Civility Week Committee, works to instill, League of Philadelphia, and having Friday night wine and cheese at home (never actually dinner!) with my husband Michael Muscarella – it’s our long-standing tradition.

What is your favorite hobby?

I don’t know that I think of it as a hobby, but I love to cook for other people, host events and holidays, and entertain at my home. COVID-19 has really put a damper on that!

What excites you about the Philadelphia area/region?

I was born and raised in Haddon Heights, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, so Philadelphia has always been a part of my life. The years that I lived in Center City in my 30s were among my happiest. I loved – and still love – how it is a sophisticated

Rosemont Votes

city that has the warmth of a small town. educate, and inspire the students, faculty, and staff to create positive change in the Rosemont and surrounding communities.

The GCEC also supports diversity & inclusion and community spirit on campus. The primary focus of the GCEC is to facilitate the Annual Global & Civic Engagement week in October and provide supplemental programming, workshops and resources throughout the academic year.

According to committee member Holly Polanki ‘21, “It’s really important for young people to get involved and be knowledgeable; to effect the changes that will impact them in the future. By voting, they are impacting their own fate.”

Lovest Diomande ‘21, another committee member, added, “Vote for those who couldn’t. Voting is so important because so many do not have a voice.”

By Katie DuBoff and Joe Darrah ’11 Faith Aquino ’00 and Katie Dailey ’01 have experienced the highs and lows during the COVID-19 crisis.

As ironic as it may seem for a registered nurse who works in a cardiothoracic ICU, Faith Aquino ’00 does not consider herself to be an alarmist.

Still, when she came into contact with the first coronavirus (COVID-19) patient to be admitted to Lankenau Hospital, Wynnewood, PA, this past spring, she was worried that it could be the start of what would become an overwhelmed healthcare system in the neighborhood and the surrounding area. The township of Lower Merion had already become known as an early “hotspot” for the virus, and as reports about a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) sprouted across the country, Aquino was becoming increasingly concerned about all of the unknowns that COVID-19 presents to patients and providers alike.

“The most important thing that we like to focus on is to be a calming presence for our patients,” said Aquino, who has been on staff at Lankenau since 2007. “We all wondered if we would have the proper PPEs and enough of them, ventilators, and other machines. And we wondered if we would need to prioritize who gets what.” Thankfully, nearly six months later, Aquino can say that her hospital has not experienced an overwhelming amount of virus spread or an underwhelming availability of PPE —mainly because of preparedness on the part of the hospital, its administration, and its staff.

“I knew we were going to see COVID-positive patients, but the hospital had already devised a plan to have enough PPE that was rationed and under lock and key to be distributed to all units when they needed it. We have always had the equipment — the masks, the gloves, the face shields — available to protect ourselves and our patients. So it has always felt like things were pretty well controlled during the pandemic.”

In nearby Philadelphia, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Common Center For Advanced Medicine, Katie Dailey ’01, a registered nurse in the operating room, is pleased to relate a similar scenario.

Faith Aquino ’00

Although the threat of the virus brings with it an anxiety that doesn’t totally fade, she has settled into working in an environment that prepared for a mass influx of patients while putting protocols into place that would help to avoid that reality from actually playing out. As part of those procedures, Dailey and her peers from the OR found themselves assisting staff members in higher trafficked departments at the height of the pandemic when elective surgeries were being postponed and resources were needed in other hospital areas. Today, Dailey and Aquino see themselves as more seasoned nurses with added perspectives that they can bring to patients and colleagues. They both recently shared their experiences with Rosemont Magazine and expressed their thoughts about where COVID-19 and healthcare in general may go from here.

Those Initial COVID Days

That first COVID patient admitted onto Aquino’s unit was experiencing the “typical” virus complications — fever, cough, difficulty breathing — and was not seeing progress despite being on a ventilator at another hospital, and would require a bit of a radical procedure in an attempt to regain her health. In the cardio ICU, patients can be offered extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a machine that is similar to a heart-lung bypass device that is used during openheart surgery that pumps and oxygenates blood outside the body while allowing the heart and lungs to rest. As the healthcare community has continued to learn how to attempt treating COVID patients, ECMO has emerged as a viable option,

Katie Dailey ’01

especially as evidence continues to show that the virus compromises, among other body organs, the heart.

“Our unit has the only ECMO-certified nurses throughout the Main Line Health System, so we had beds designated, and we received all of our other hospitals’ transfer patients,” Aquino said. “These patients’ lungs are unable to oxygenate or ventilate properly, so the machine does it for them.”

Though the procedure has proven successful, having COVID patients in close proximity, in particular, to a cardio-compromised population is a great risk. And so patients would be isolated as best as possible, which represents one of the toughest aspects of the pandemic, said Aquino and Dailey.

“These patients can’t have any friends or family in the hospital with them, even when they’re awake,” said Dailey. “And that’s very foreign. So these patients really need you to show them that you care because they don’t have their loved ones around them. The most important thing that we’ve been able to do for these patients is to be nurturing to show that we care about them.”

Dailey, who is now back to being predominately staffed in the outpatient Common Center’s OR, spent several months being asked to lend her services in a variety of ways to help keep spaces available and sanitized for COVID patients. From checking temperatures of those entering the hospital to organizing donations that flowed in from the community, Dailey and others often did not know what each day onsite would be like.

Like Aquino, she said she never felt a sense of panic, primarily because her