The Beginning: Novel Nurse vs Novel Virus

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As I wrapped up nursing school and graduated in December of 2019, I knew that transitioning into my practice as a full-fledged nurse was going to be one of my biggest challenges yet. Little did I know, I was about to face the challenge of a lifetime.

Not just a challenge for myself, but for my fellow classmates and the health care community as a whole.

For my first nursing job I was hired to work on a pulmonology floor where we specialize in helping patients with chronic or new-to-them lung diseases, or disorders. I was beyond excited to work on this floor and absorb as much knowledge as humanly possible. We, new grad nurses, are sponges for knowledge after all.

I started my preceptorship (training/orientation) on my new floor in late January/early February and knew right away I was really going to love working there and taking care of this patient population.

Just as I was passing the halfway point of my preceptorship we began hearing news reports of a novel (new) virus that targets the respiratory system specifically. Or at least that’s what we knew about it at the time.

As we all tried to prepare for what was about to happen next, I realized that I was about to be a part of a significant time in health care history. I may have been new on the unit, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to read the air and know that no one knew what we were in for or how to effectively prepare for it.

Before I knew it we had our first patient on the unit who had been swabbed for the novel coronavirus, COVID-19.

Thankfully this patient came back negative, but it felt like no time before we did have our first positive patient on the unit and masks were to be worn at all times in the hospital by all employees.

It was on March 24th that my manager sent us a text within our unit’s group chat that half of our unit would now be designated for COVID-19 positive patients while the other half would be for those who are sick, have been swabbed and were just waiting on their results.

This is the day, March 24, 2020, when it all became real – the pandemic had reached us and the battle was about to begin.

At first, we experienced a sort of “calm before the storm”, as they worked to keep our unit empty in anticipation of a wave of patients affected by this virus. We watched as our country worked hard to learn more about this invisible monster, leading to new protocols and procedures that would change daily, if not twice a day.

This wasn’t so bad at first while our census was low, but before long we were being bombarded with patients. Initially, swabs to test for this virus as well as PPE (personal protective equipment) to keep us safe, weren’t so easy to come by.

Our country was not prepared for a pandemic. The supply of PPE and swabs were not able to match the need for these things very easily. Not to mention, people worldwide were panic buying a lot of essential goods, leading to shortages. Including nursing shortages.

As the swabs became more available more patients continued to come through with a pending test result. These patients ranged from those experiencing the obvious signs and symptoms that we were aware of so far, to patients who had no such symptoms and were hospitalized for entirely different reasons.

We nurses soon realized that this significant influx of patients who didn’t have a clear reason as to why they would be swabbed for COVID-19. We’d have men who had just been in motorcycle accidents and were dealing with a badly broken leg or others who just needed their gallbladder removed.

We knew that they were just swabbing everyone who came through those emergency room doors so that we could work to “flatten the curve.”

As great as it was that our hospital was trying so hard to get ahead of this thing, a lot of the weight of this situation was placed on my floor and the nurses and CNAs who worked there. For some time we became a sort of observational or short-term unit for these patients who were just waiting to get their COVID result while continuing necessary treatments for a secondary illness they were facing at the time.

Just as fast as we would get a negative result and send a patient off to another floor, away from any COVID positive patients, no sooner would we have a new one rolling onto the unit. Our floor became a revolving door for COVID pending patients.

If there was one thing I knew for sure, it was that this pandemic will either make or break me. I can either adapt and learn or let it break my nursing spirit.

I continued to persevere as I was thrown into the fire of getting off of my preceptorship as an independent nurse during a pandemic. Times got tougher and tougher, but I grew smarter and smarter. I don’t know about you, but I learn well under pressure. This was a new level of pressure that’s for sure, but I knew I would make it through and come out as an amazing nurse.

To any other new nurses out there fighting in this war against this crazy virus (and the media), I believe in you. This is nothing we could have predicted or prepared for a new grad nurse, so just hold on tight and ride this wave to the other side where you will come out of it that much stronger and wiser.