The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Hospital workers find strength in unity
Yale New Haven Hospital interventional technologist Julie Albrecht knew exactly how the words on signs her department members held up last March summed up feelings of working during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re always going to be here for our patients no matter what,” Albrecht said recently.
The team in the YNHH Heart and Vascular Center has remained devoted both to patients and each other these last 10 months, members said, since nine radiology technologists and one nurse held signs that read, “We stay here for you. Please stay home for us,” in a photo that caught the attention of many when it was shared on Twitter.
The message remains true.
The team has worked as the pandemic evolved, through changes, fear, myriad emotions, worry about patients and worries about their own families, they said.
Dr. Michelle Maneevese has told Hearst Connecticut Media that the IR department at the hospital performs nonsurgical procedures threading wires through catheters in major blood vessels, enabling doctors to deliver chemotherapy directly to a tumor, to open a blocked artery or remove a pulmonary embolism.
The team hopes even now that the signs they held up carried a strong enough message to keep some people home to curtail spread of the virus. They credit interventional technologist Michelle Guilbault with the idea for the signs.
They knew the message spread.
James Myers, also an interventional technologist, said his aunt in another state saw the photo of
them holding the signs on a TV news clip.
“I think a lot of people got it; they understood what was meant by this, an ‘all in together thing,’” he said. “I know it reached a lot of people.”
“It was inspirational that it caught on outside of the walls” here, said Dawn Tomaszewski, the senior manager at YNHH Interventional Radiology Lab in the Heart and Vascular Center. “It was really a source of strength for our team.”
Inside the hospital, the IR team depends on each other for support, through months of protocols that included multiple layers of protective measures: gowns, masks, shields (yes, it gets very warm under all that gear) and making sure they kept their own families safe.
“It makes you rethink how you do things even in your own home,” said interventional technologist Stephanie Gambardella.
In some cases, team members have not seen parents or grandparents for months, they said. Colleagues have grown closer in the months since they held up those signs for the photo, they said.
“We really have stepped up; we are quite a team and we just stick together,” said nurse Danielle Jeffery. “We’ve had hard times, we helped each other out, we do take it to heart.”
Myers noted the IR team works to keep people safe.
“Regardless of what is going on in the world ... we still come here every day to do what we can do to make a difference in people’s lives,” he said. “We are still humans we all have lives outside these walls.”
“I feel very grateful for the team that we have,” said Alyssa Gade, also an interventional technologist.
Albrecht said working through the pandemic “made us appreciate the little things in life.”
“You just have to figure out what makes you happy in your small world,” she said.
Interventional technologist James Carilli, a newer member of the team, who was not in the photo from last March, said that in months since he has worked at YNHH, said he found a a “strong support system and a strong foundation” there.
“It’s the little things that add up,” he said.
The team recently made new signs: “United and always hopeful. Here for you. #Crush Covid.”
“We get a sick patient and we take care of them, We do it to the best of our best ability. Having these people helped us get through these situations,” said Gambardella.
“We are more like a family than anything else,” said Meyers.