More than 12 UPMC Altoona nurses participated in Covid-19 candlelight patrol nurses at Cricket Field Plaza across from the hospital on November 18, 2020. Photos of mirror files by Patrick Waksmunski
Editor's Note: This is the sixth in a series that looks back on Covid-19, highlighting those who have been hit by healthcare professionals when the pandemic is.
Kerri Golden's husband Tim was an orthodontist who worked in health care for 25 years.
Golden has overcome the pandemic, adapting braces in nursing homes and hospitals, and witnessing devastation at those facilities.
Golden left the profession last year and is now working as a facility manager for a local high school, plowing the snow and overseeing the project, his wife said.
He loves it, she said.
According to Kelly, dean of the health sciences at St. Francis University, her husband's experience exemplifies the sacrifices that the pandemic has had on members of health care professionals.
It's not only death, but also a test where he had to be asked about his husband being in those facilities, questions about his health that he had to answer, protective devices that he had to wear, and especially questions about his facilities, such as taking the virus home to his family and aging parents or spreading the illness to patients.
It was a burden, she said.
But the hospital nurses made that worse.
The pandemic has put them in serious stress about the vast amounts of sick patients, medical uncertainty about the best ways to treat Covid, the loss of life at a rate they have never experienced before, the extra hours of work from their families, the need to isolate when exposed to the virus, and, according to Kelly Golden, the need to isolate them.
It led to fatigue, anxiety and depression for many, exacerbating the social isolation enforced by the closure of co-fighting, deprived those nurses and others of activities that helped make life more enjoyable, increased the need for counseling and antidepressants, and stripped them of everything to deal with it, she said.
The damage to nurses and other healthcare providers has led many people, like my husband, to quit healthcare altogether, exacerbating the existing nursing shortage, Golden said.
That was exacerbated by the number of nurses at the time, at the time, at the time, Golden said.
The experience living through Covid has brought training and education issues for current university students, replenishing medical professionals in the near future.
Academically, they average half the grade of pre-pandemic levels, Golden said it cited the Associated Press.
St. Francis instructors are trying to help them adapt – to get caught up, she said.
In middle and high school, students currently in college felt a lot of stress from sitting in their daily lives, with many losing people who were succumbing to the virus, and they all lost milestone life events, she said.
Many have experienced grief over such losses, she said.
Grief changes people, and sometimes she said, for better or worse, depending on the amount of support she receives from her family and the community.
She also said it will change the way they see the world.
The effect remains and she said the experience should be acknowledged.
The experience at these universities is manifesting in the demand for St. Francis' health services, which is at a “exponentially” higher level than before, Golden said.
As a result, she said, she needed more counselors and allowed her to expand her time to make support available.
Many students are hampered towards face-to-face interactions like faculty and prefer email communications — she said, which is likely that they interact via screens.
To counter that stigma due to face-to-face interaction, instructors train students in the importance of eye contact with patients, actively listening, and reading nonverbal cues such as facial expressions and tones of voice, she said.
According to Golden, the Covid experience also appears to have left current college students revived.
The instructors have found that they are easily overwhelmed, easily shed tears, require more time than the typical previous time to process feedback, and the frequent security that things are going well as long as they continue to apply themselves.
Instructors learned that they need to be patient with such students, she said.
Those students “want to hear,” she said. “Our job is to help them build resilience.”
That help, coupled with kindness and compassion, can take a form of encouragement and support through failure, she said.
“The world needs more (just),” she said.
She said St. Francis is a small school and has the ability to provide such help.
“We want them to succeed,” she said. “Take them out in the real world to help others.”
Coupled with university experience, such community experiences of students help them become better practitioners after graduation and after they graduate.
UPMC did its part
During Pandemic, UPMC helped provide guidance on how it handles Covid across the United States, according to a statement provided to the Mirror by an organization's spokesman.
“There was a huge amount of information, research and resource sharing,” the spokesman said. “Our contributions have been important to rapidly develop best practices for the care of COVID-19 patients around the world, to prevent people with immunocompromised conditions from becoming ill and to continue to provide high quality health care to all patients.”
According to a spokesperson, UPMC has “reduced” telehealth to ensure widespread healthcare for face-to-face interactions, so more patients may encounter doctors from home as more patients may encounter patients electronically in rural hospitals.
UPMC also created a post-Covid recovery clinic to help deepen a better understanding of long covid, which helps to deepen a better understanding of long covid, according to the statement.
The organization has also worked to alleviate the nursing shortages that COVID has been in advance and have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
During the pandemic, the organization has launched initiatives that will interest students in middle, high school and high school nursing, through job shadows, career fairs and paid internships, according to spokesmen.
Since the pandemic, UPMC has been working to educate and recruit “next generation of healthcare professionals,” and its organization's hospitals have been working with local school districts on “immersive career days” and shadowing opportunities.
The organization also developed a partnership with universities, universities and clinical training programs designed to allow them to work at UPMC Hospital, according to a spokesman.
Mental health challenges
The stress and fear associated with Covid have disappeared for the majority of members of the Blair County chapter of the National Union on Mental Illness, according to Amy Burns, the organization's executive director.
But perhaps 10% of its members are concerned that some communities will last longer, Burns said.
These concerns emerged in the recent winter when some members said they had stopped attending group meetings and were planning to wait for spring.
When Covid began to infuriate five years ago, many of the local Nami members grew up in fear of coming out of their homes, she said.
She said forced quarantine of the closure exacerbated such anxiety.
To further exacerbate such issues with Nami members, she said access to mental health services was difficult.
There was an existing shortage of mental health providers that has worsened, she said. During Covid, the wait list for services meant a delay of 3-6 months.
Additional issues were caused by the requirement to conduct sessions electronically to avoid physical contact. According to Burns, it took time to resolve the telehealth policy, which guaranteed no privacy violations.
Conversely, some patients lacked electronics due to telehealth connectivity, she said.
Anyway, Burns said that Telehealth sessions were not ideal, and delays in therapy services have been eased somewhat.
“We cannot replace one-on-one room type treatment,” she said.
According to Burns, some mental health patients may have suffered residual scars and trauma from their experience with COVID.
“But I certainly can't say,” she said.
Nationally, there is “talks” that the survey may be approaching to document the issue, and that such a survey should be conducted.
Miller staff writer William Kibbler is 814-949-7038.
