VA nurse: ‘Things were really bad’ in NYC
Watching COVID patients miss loved ones hit hard
Tabitha Eden’s first deployment was in 2004 to Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Her second was in 2013 in Djibouti in Africa.
She is currently on her third deployment — in New York City.
Eden, a commander and a nurse corps officer in the U.S. Navy reserves and the program manager of nursing education and research at the Milwaukee VA Medical Center, was part of a group that was deployed to the coronavirus pandemic hot zone of the United States in April with the goal of training and assisting other health care workers in the city.
Upon arrival, it wasn’t what she saw that gave her an idea of how bad things were, it’s what she didn’t see — people. The streets were empty. The shops were closed. No tourists taking photos. No sidewalk salesmen trying to sell sunglasses, music or purses.
“Even if you haven’t been here before, as soon as we got off that bus you can tell ‘this isn’t normal,’” Eden said. “That made a big impact on us. It was kind of eerie or scary to have that kind of image to have as the first impression of the city that we arrived in. But that gave us an indication that things were really bad here.”
Eden and her unit were assigned to the Javits Center, a huge convention center in Manhattan where more than 1,000 coronavirus patients were treated.
“This is a really unique environment,” Eden said. “When we got here, we had to start working right away and we’re also working in an environment, being that we’re in a convention center, that was created or turned into a hospital.”
“We had to do a quick assessment and see what we needed to focus on or prioritize at the beginning to make sure our goal, and we achieved it, was to make sure we still delivered high-quality health care to this population,” Eden said. “Despite that we were in a pretty unprecedented health care environment.”
The toughest part of the job, Eden said, was watching patients fight the virus without family or friends present.
“That’s a really difficult thing to see,” Eden said. “To see this number of people be ill for quite a long period of time without the ability to have physical or in-person contact with their family members, it’s obvious how much of a toll that takes on the patient.”
Eden said she had to adjust her bedside manner.
“For me, it was just as important to be compassionate as it was to know exactly what you needed to do to care for them medically,” Eden said. “But it was easy to do in a place like this where our team worked so well together, and we were so focused on the mission. It comes naturally in a situation like this.”
For a lot of patients, English was not their first language, but many would write thank you notes in English to the nurses before being discharged.
“When patients would leave things like that it would be widely disseminated to the staff just to remind them just how important their work is,” Eden said.
Eden’s main job was to help educate nurses and other health care workers on equipment and practices they could use to help patients. She used several different platforms and technology to help convey the most accurate information.
Eden wanted the nurses to be able to access the information on their phones inside the center, so she created an online newsletter to be emailed to the staff.
“It kind of looked like a Facebook feed, and they could scroll through and I could put links to videos or other information, so they had it all at their fingertips,” Eden said.
Using technology to educate health care workers is also part of Eden’s job at the Milwaukee VA.
“I was lucky that all of those things that we do at home fit so well into this environment that I was able to implement them right away and start giving everyone the information and education
that they needed,” Eden said.
‘It feels like we’re at home’
Eden is also part of the rapid response team that jumps into action whenever there was an issue.
“We’re walking through the center, talking to the teams, asking them to identify any patients that they’re concerned about so we can go see them in advance,” Eden said. “We do that on a regular basis.”
With two deployments under her belt, Eden said she was able to focus on the mission but some of her younger colleagues, who did not have the experience, struggled.
“I don’t think any one of us could possibly have envisioned this type of scenario, even four months ago,” Eden said. “It feels like we’re at home and it’s hard for them to make that transition in their mind that this is a deployment environment... it’s been hard for them.”
What has helped Eden the most is knowing that things are taken care of back home.
Her husband, Chris, a Marine, has been assuring her that the house and their two sons are doing well.
“He could not have made it easier for me to leave my kids,” Eden said. “I just knew that he had everything taken care of. He made it so that I had no outside stressors from home besides the fact that I missed them... I’m extremely lucky for that.”
Her son’s teachers have been putting in some extra time checking in on the boys to make sure they are OK while their mom is away, Eden said.
“That extra support, it makes or breaks a deployment,” Eden said. “I’ve been so lucky.”
The deployment is likely nearing its end. The Javits Center was preparing to close on Friday.
“It’s a bit sad to leave because we were in a groove and really working well together and providing great care,” Eden said. “But if the city of New York feels they are getting back on their feet and they have the resources they need, I’m happy to get back to my family and my civilian job.”