ATHOL – Don’t call her or her co-workers heroes. Laura Neverett, a registered nurse from Athol, says she and other health care workers on the front lines in the battle against COVID-19 are simply doing their jobs.
For three decades she has cared for patients on the cardiac and vascular intensive care unit at UMass Memorial Hospital in Worcester. That all changed when it became clear a pandemic was on the horizon.
“We’ve all been kind of displaced from our home, we call them, or our home units,” she told the Athol Daily News. “When we knew the coronavirus was coming to Massachusetts, we had to move our cardiac ICU up to another floor and then our unit was a converted to all negative-pressure rooms. All of those negative-pressure rooms have patients in them who are either COVID ‘rule out” or COVID positive patients.”
She said most cardiac surgeries were put on hold and, as a result, activity on the cardiac ICU was significantly diminished.
“I just decided – I felt called or needed on those (COVID) units,” said Neverett. “I knew they were surging up and they needed a lot of ICU units. So, a lot of us from other ICUs have moved on to those other units to relieve pressures there.”
She said she works days on her own unit, unless she gets ‘floated’ to a COVID unit, “and then I work two extra days, two extra 12-hour shifts, in whichever COVID unit they need me in.” At the moment, she is working four or five 12- or 13-hour shifts per week. Neverett said she knows nurses working 12-hour shifts for eight days straight.
She said the hospital can’t require nurses to work longer hours than their regular schedule calls for, “But it’s hard for us to stay home when we know that our friends and co-workers are drowning in assignments.”
“It’s kind of a balancing act,” Neverett said. “It’s hard to be home when you know your co-workers really need nurses. And every day there’s a lot of need. We have a messenger page, and when it gets posted on the page ‘looking for seven nurses tonight, looking for eight nurses tonight,’ you respond. I’m particularly choosing to do more just because I’m doing what I can do, and my skill is needed. I think a lot of us are doing it because our skill is needed at this time; it’s not going to last forever. We just want to make sure these patients are safe and taken care of because they’re all by themselves in the hospital.”
Neverett said most of her colleagues appear to be dealing with the pressures of the job pretty well.
“It’s hard to come in and watch patients die,” she said. “A lot of our patients die. But I think as ICU nurses, we’ve already seen that a lot. In particular, the nurses that are working on those units full time — I can’t speak for everybody — the nurses I work with, because we’re in the ICU, we see the worst of the patients that come in. Not that you get used to death.
“You come home and you cry more than other times. You get attached to them — you get attached to their families. So, it’s hard. But from my perspective and the perspective of the nurses I work with, death is a part of life and we do our part to try to help that process, that transition.”
Neverett said one thing, however, makes the current process different, and more difficult, than what most health care workers have been used to.
“Patients are dying by themselves and their families can’t be around them,” she said. “So, that just added more stress to death and dying. Before, families would come in and be around the patient and you’d do what you could to support the families, but it’s not that way right now.
“So, that makes it more difficult, because you have to come up with some types of creative ways to keep the families involved, even though they can’t be there. We have to assure family members on the phone that their loved ones won’t die alone.”
Yet, because she sees most colleagues apparently handling the stress, “That doesn’t mean there is not grief and difficulty for some more than others. Our hospital is offering help to those who need to talk or to provide emotional and mental support. We as nurses also are known for talking things out between ourselves, sharing our tears and our hearts. It helps. We are a team and look for ways to support each other in all areas of our lives.”
As the interview with Neverett drew to a conclusion, she said, “Please, don’t make this all about me. There are so, so many people in this fight. Everyone involved deserves recognition, but we’re not heroes. We just kind of come to work and work as a team. That’s what we do. It’s just what we do.”