ER nurse talks about getting vaccine
Monterey ER nurse on getting coronavirus vaccine
MONTEREY >> Susan Burnell, RN, has received a lot of shots over the years. This time, she was so excited she got goosebumps as she stood, fifth in line, waiting to receive the new Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula held an employee clinic starting Friday to vaccinate as many front-line, high-risk health care workers as possible, with their first allocation of the vaccine.
Due to the initial limited availability of the vaccine, federal and state governments have developed a phased or tiered system to determine for whom the vaccination is most urgent. The first tier includes health care workers and long-term care residents, considered at the highest risk of infection or becoming seriously ill.
“I believe, in receiving this vaccine, we just made history,” said Burnell, director of the Emergency Department at Community Hospital. “I chose to receive this vaccine because I believe this was the first tangible thing that gives us hope. I care deeply about my community, and about my coworkers in the ER and throughout the hospital, who are exhausted, overwhelmed, and dedicated, who show up every day, work overtime, and take their nursing oath seriously.”
Receiving the shot, said Burnell, did not hurt. Her arm felt sore the next day, and it was a little uncomfortable to raise her arm, but by the second day, she felt fine.
Despite nearly 10 months of following directives to wash hands, wear a mask, refrain from gathering, and maintain a 6-foot distance from others in public, Burnell acknowledges the virus is more widespread than ever. The vaccine, she says, is science, which is what we need.
“Every day we get more positive cases, of all ages, and people are much sicker,” she said. “But we have solid history that vaccines work — polio, mumps, measles, smallpox, shingles, diphtheria. If anything is going to put a dent in this disease, it’s going to be the vaccine.”
Inspired by compassionate care
Susan Burnell went into nurs
ing for very personal reasons. Her husband, the father of her children, suffered a life- threatening illness while she was pregnant with their second child. After experiencing an aortic aneurism, he was sick for 13 months, most of which he spent in the ICU. And then he died, shortly after meeting his newborn son.
“The ICU nurses became my family,” Burnell said. “I was a young, widowed mom, who had finished a little bit of college, and needed to do something with my life. As awful as my experience was, I was inspired to go back to school and become a nurse. And I have a different relationship with patients because of it, because of how those ICU nurses cared for us.
After graduating from the Maurine Church Coburn School of Nursing at Monterey Peninsula College, Burnell went on to achieve her master’s degree in nursing education, through the University of Phoenix.
“I was a critical- care nurse at the bedside, and then I went to work in the emergency department, where I became the nurse educator. After serving as the director of education,” she said, “I became the nursing director of the emergency department. I love to teach nursing, but I also love being with patients, at the bedside. As a director, I get to do both.”
On the front line
For Burnell, working as a frontline nurse and as the director of an emergency department has created a dynamic, fulfilling career. Carrying out these roles and responsibilities during a global pandemic has been, she said, “mind-blowing.”
“As emergency nurses, we’re trained to prepare for disasters,” she said. “We drill and drill. And then the pandemic happened, in real-time. Based on what I see every day, the constant worry I have for our community and for my staff has been over the top. The only way to mitigate fear and anxiety is to trust the science, trust the FDA and the CDC and what they’re learning and reporting.”
Burnell oversees 150 staff members, most of whom were vaccinated in the first tier. This includes ICU staff and the respiratory therapy department.
“Only a handful of staff have been a little leery about being vaccinated,” she said. “A couple of women are pregnant, and a few others have had adverse reactions to receiving other vaccinations in the past. This vaccination is not mandatory.”
For Burnell, running a hospital emergency department during a pandemic has been an alchemy of experience and learning on the job. When the community shut down in March, everything possible was moved outside, into tents, where patients were isolated until it could be determined if they were positive for COVID-19 or not. Staff put on layers of protective equipment and adapted to working outside, in the cold.
“My staff are warriors,” Burnell said. “They’re working, 24/7, outside. We built a makeshift tent initially used for all COVID-positive patients who didn’t need admission or respiratory therapy. We’re barely using that now because patients coming in are much sicker than before.”
Early in the pandemic, Burnell received notification of a COVID-positive patient once a day, if that. Now, she receives five to seven new patients every hour which, during the last month, totaled 10 to 25 positive cases every single day.
“We went from March to October with very few admissions,” she said. “Now, we’re holding steady at 35 COVID- positive patients in our three COVID units. And, we’re taking in transfers from Mee Memorial, Salinas Valley Memorial, and Natividad Medical Center because they are at capacity.”
When Burnell thinks about that long-anticipated vaccination day, she realizes how timely it seemed and how desperately she and her colleagues have awaited its arrival.
“Until the vaccine becomes widely available,” she said, “we will continue to show up, to come to work every day, and put our patients first. This vaccine provides us with the hope that maybe, just maybe, one day we will catch a break, breathe, and take some meaningful time off.”
And perhaps then, the painful facial pressure marks from tight masks will disappear.
“In the meantime,” she said, “We remain grateful for what we have—each other and Instacart and Hallmark movies—and we pray.”