Julia Eze: Nurse Practitioner, Atlanta, GA
POPSUGAR: Can you describe your prepandemic work life and how it changed during the pandemic?
Julia Eze: Prior to the pandemic. I worked on an inpatient bone-marrow transplant unit. Because the oncology and bone-marrow transplant patient populations are extremely vulnerable, when the pandemic began, the goal was to keep them out of the hospital, so transplants and some chemotherapies were postponed. As a result, the census on the unit dropped drastically, from an average of greater than 50 patients to less than 20. This decline in patients on my unit is what led me to go and help out in the epicentre of the COVID crisis in New York. I mostly worked seven days a week in a high COVID-impacted area.
PS: How does being a health worker impact your mental health in a positive and/or negative way, and has this changed during the pandemic?
"Once the pandemic began, the constant fear that the very lifesaving care I was providing my patients may compromise my own (or my family's) health was daunting."
JE: When caring for patients, I've always taken the approach of gratitude — often reminding myself that no matter what I may be experiencing in my personal circumstances, things could be much worse. This has always kept me grounded in my work life. But in all fairness, this mindset was much easier to maintain prior to the pandemic. Once the pandemic began, the constant fear that the very lifesaving care I was providing my patients may compromise my own (or my family's) health was daunting. This was the game changer that began to play on my psyche.
PS: In my experience, a lot of health workers don't believe they require (or perhaps, deserve) psychological support or assistance for "simply doing their jobs." What is your experience with this, and has your perspective changed since the pandemic began?
JE: I agree. Psychological support hasn't been a mainstay in healthcare. Even the longstanding history of burnout in healthcare hasn't prompted the creation of a universal resource. While working during the crisis, I definitely saw various members of the healthcare team fold due to the pressure and trauma caused by the pandemic.
PS: Were you offered psychological support, and is there any service you wish you had been offered to cope better during the pandemic?
JE: At the hospital I worked, there was a wellness room that served to provide a safe space of respite and relaxation while on the job. I thought this was extremely cool, but sadly didn't exist prior to the pandemic. The pandemic shed light on how ill-prepared and fragile the healthcare system was/is regarding pandemic response. Nursing is the largest sector of the healthcare field and should have had more training in this area, as well as mental health and wellness.
PS: Throughout the pandemic, health workers have been hailed as heroes and were compared to soldiers going to the frontline of a war. How did this make you feel?
JE: While it felt good to be acknowledged, nurses were being praised for doing the job we'd always done, so it was disheartening that it took a pandemic to reveal our contributions. Ironically, the pandemic also shed a light on how little the general public knows about the role of nurses. Additionally, It was also hard to see so many people praise nurses yet claim the pandemic is a hoax, or behave in ways that further spread the virus.
PS: Do you think the work you have done during the pandemic will affect you long-term, psychologically, or in a different way than your pre-COVID workload did?
JE: I'll never forget my pandemic experience. I do believe not only the workload, but the crisis hours and the physical and mental exhaustion will stay with me.