No Longer a Nursing Student
After working forty hours in the hospital this week, I am finding myself physically and emotionally exhausted. Hospital culture as we knew it to be a couple months ago has completely shifted. A normal day on my unit used to consist of the controlled chaos you would expect on a typical Medical-Surgical floor, but now the atmosphere has changed to one of nervousness and uncertainty. Nurses are scared, techs are scared, physical therapists are scared, I am scared. The halls are silent, the echoes of visitor and volunteer voices and footsteps no longer linger in the hallways; It is almost as if these sounds have been replaced with the silent yet overtaking voice of fear. The way I have cared for my patients since the COVID-19 outbreak has changed drastically. Prior to COVID-19 , I was not nervous or hesitant to walk into a patient’s room. If a patient needed to be put on precautions, we already knew and were made aware. We had plenty of personal protective equipment (PPE)