Front line fears
Lehigh Valley nurses, doctors concerned for themselves, families
When emergency room doctor Gillian Beauchamp goes from treating coronavirus patients to the home she shares with her husband, she pays attention to everything she touches: the floor, the doorknobs, the handles, the light switches.
She worries about contaminating them, though she’s washed her hands and kicked off her shoes.
“I’ve never thought of myself as Typhoid Mary,” she says. “That’s how I see myself now.”
A few weeks ago, Beauchamp was at a Starbucks drive-thru,
and after realizing how close she would have to get to the person handling orders, she left.
Now, she doesn’t do drivethrus, doesn’t shop at supermarkets, doesn’t go anywhere but the hospital. When she gets home, she decontaminates herself, her stethoscope, eye protections and bag. Everything. She cleans the whole car, puts her clothes in a bag and takes the bag right to the washing machine.
Beauchamp is a toxicologist at Lehigh Valley Health Network and has been caring for coronavirus patients. Like many health care workers in the Lehigh Valley and across the country, Beauchamp is anxious and afraid that she will inadvertently infect her family or a stranger. So she isolates herself as much as she can.
In emergency rooms and hospitals, health care workers are trained to handle high stress, mass casualty situations. They go to work prepared to do whatever is needed to keep people alive. The work is risky, difficult and emotionally draining, even without the new worry that the coronavirus brings for themselves and their families.
Out in the community, health care workers are treated simultaneously as heroes and outcasts — being cheered by some as they start their shifts on the front lines, and avoided by others because of their proximity to a deadly virus.
All the while, they’ve seen dozens of their colleagues across the country fall sick from the coronavirus and a few die after treating infected patients. And they’ve had to make do with a shortage of masks and other gear that could protect them from the same fate. Many have asked for hazard pay, only to find that hospitals are furloughing some medical staff to reduce costs, as numerous profitable services have been suspended.
While hospitals in the Lehigh Valley haven’t seen the same volume of patients that are overwhelming New York City hospitals, that may change soon. One Lehigh Valley Health Network doctor said about a dozen patients were in intensive care units across the network near the start of April, and that the number had more than tripled last week.
Pennsylvania may reach the peak for hospitalizations this weekend and the peak for deaths on April 15, according to the
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a research center at the University of Washington. But as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said, “The virus itself determines that timetable.”
Health care workers are keenly aware that surging numbers only heightens their risk.
“You’re constantly thinking, ‘Am I safe?’ ” said an emergency room nurse at an area hospital, who was not authorized to talk to the media.
At the same time, she worries that she could be asymptomatic but positive, inadvertently infecting people.
“You’re negotiating these imaginary lines all the time,” she said.
To comfort staff, St. Luke’s University Health Network offers calls twice a day for employees to talk through their concerns and share coping mechanisms, said the Rev. Mary Catherine Cole, the network’s director of pastoral care.
Health care workers have talked about the stress of working with very sick coronavirus patients and then having to take care of family at home, but have not shared with her any concerns about their safety, Cole said.
“We’re acknowledging feelings, processing those emotional physical reactions,” she said.
“And we move toward, as a group, some healthy coping mechanisms.”
The first call on Wednesday had about 170 participants, she said.
Therapists, social workers, chaplains and physicians are also checking in on the doctors, nurses and cleaning staff, she said, making sure they are doing OK physically and mentally.
Lehigh Valley Health Network did not respond to questions about what it is doing to help employees deal with their anxieties about the virus.
An intensive care unit nurse who also wasn’t authorized to speak publicly, said that because the virus is novel, health care workers are learning about it as they go along — which is not a comfortable position for people who typically approach their jobs with confidence and knowledge.
“It’s anxiety-producing because you have no idea what you’re going to do until you get there,” she said, adding that even doctors with decades of experience are still trying to understand the disease.
The nurses also are aware that their patients are scared.
And when their shifts are over, they worry about bringing the coronavirus to their homes and communities.
Health care workers are grappling with whether they should spend as much time with their families as they can or if they should keep their distance to protect them.
“That’s never happened to us here, where we’ve had to make those kinds of decisions,” Beauchamp said.
Some of her co-workers, she said, are sleeping separately from their spouses, living in hotels, sending their children to live with relatives. There have been reports elsewhere of doctors sleeping in cars or RVs to avoid contact with family. And colleges in the Lehigh Valley have opened their dorms to doctors, nurses and first responders looking for a place to sleep.
But separating from family members presents a host of other worries.
As Beauchamp noted, coronavirus patients are not allowed visitors, and those who are dying, do so alone.
“That’s what makes all of us afraid,” she said. “We separate from family, and if we get sick or they sick, we will not be able to see them.”
“We’re trying to be hopeful, but we’re realistic,” she said. “We’re trying to brave, but we’re fearful.”