Frontline workers describe COVID climate

Regional frontline healthcare workers working through the Mayo Clinic with COVID-19 patients held a virtual forum last week, where they described the challenges, opportunities and cumulative fatigue among their co-workers.

Traci Kokke, RN, an infectious disease nurse at Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse originally from Galesville, said the environment for those on the front lines has been “anxiety-ridden.” She added though that her work in testing tents has also been an opportunity to educate and reassure.

“Being able to teach them the reasons and all of that going with it, as far as why they need to wear their masks, how hand-washing works and the why’s,” Kokke said. “People ask you when they’re in line and they’re ready to get swabbed, they are very vulnerable at that point. They ask a lot of questions.”

Interactions with patients have not always been positive however, as respiratory therapist Desirae Cogswell, RRT, LRT, working in Rochester, MN described.

“I have heard people who consider (COVID-19) a hoax. I can tell you from my point of view, which is not a good side of this virus that it is not. It is real, it is here, and we have a choice to make if we’re gonna be a part of the problem or part of the prevention,” Cogswell said.

Paramedic Andrew Torres, who also works in Rochester with Mayo Clinic Ambulance, said it is especially tough for him and other healthcare workers to hear deniers when they’ve seen firsthand the damage the virus has done to some patients.

“You just do your best to try and reeducate and say ‘No, these things are really happening, and these symptoms are real and these people are really sick,’” Torres said.

As far as the severity of those symptoms, Kokke described that among patients she has treated, short-term outcomes from terminal to much less severe encompass a wide range.

“Some of them have died, some have been on ventilators, some have done really well and gotten to go home, some have been in the hospital for months. So it’s been a wide range of one spectrum (of recovery) to the complete spectrum of death,” Kokke said.

Critical Care nurse Amy Spitzner, RN, CCRN, who works in the medical intensive care unit at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, added that some of the patients she has cared for are “the sickest you’ve ever seen in your life.”

“They can be fine one day, and the next day, they’re on the ventilator. When we go to intubate them, we know that as the caretakers, for a lot of these patients we are the last people that they talk to. We hold that when we go home at night,” Spitzner said. “We can have them on the maximum amount of support, and we still see their bodies giving out.”

For each of the healthcare workers in the forum, self-care practices  such as seeing family and friends outside of their immediate household has been a nonstarter for months.

“Those are things that kind of help reset you. Without those support groups, you have to take extra precautions, and you have to adapt to those things,” Torres said, adding that internal communication with co-workers and regular virtual chats with friends and family have helped to a degree. “It’s been tough, but we make it through.”

Kokke added that when she is out in the community and witnesses people not taking precautions such as social distancing or masking, she feels frustrated, disheartened and disrespected as a medical professional.

“We need to somehow change the culture of what a mask means,” Kokke said. “Wearing that mask says nothing else but you protect yourself and those around you.”

She added that while wearing a mask is a right, it is also the right of each person to take part in preventative measures to protect their community.

“That is also your right, that you protect yourself and others, that’s your responsibility,” Kokke said. “(If) that would somehow empower them that way instead, so we could all move forward together, instead of such a division.”