Let me preface this with the statement that I just need to vent. I’m now a Staff Development Coordinator/ADON, Infection Preventionist, wound nurse in LTC. I’m tired and I’m actually scared. Our facility got hit HARD by COVID. Things are better now, but I’m scared to death we’re going to get hit again. The hospitals refuse to test patients before they come to us, And their staff aren’t tested with any regularity. We had one staff member test positive and now I have to test the entire facility for 2 weeks until we have 14 days with no positives. Now we have to open up for indoor family visitation and the area we are in, the public believes that COVID is no big deal. We’ve had multiple families break the rules during outdoor visitation. We lost 14 residents and multiple staff got sick. Even though those staff members recovered, some have continuing problems, cardiac, vascular, nerve damage. I wear a N95 everyday that I purchased for myself under my facility mask. I don’t think any of us can deal with going through this again. And I’m TIRED of us being portrayed in the media as the “negligent” places, dirty and uncaring. It seems like when people lost their lives in the hospital they “died of COVID”, but in the nursing homes they were “killed”. Folks who don’t know what we went through say, “Everything will be alright.” But WE KNOW it won’t be alright for a lot of people. Images of people dying with air hunger haunt me, and I’m afraid we’re going backwards again. We KNEW this was airborne. But we weren’t equipped to handle an airborne virus and we still aren’t. I’m scared for my team, I’m scared for my patients and I’m scared for my family and myself. And I’m TIRED. Now they want to restart the annual DPH Survey process. Ugh.
Thank you for reading.
