Centura clinicians battle COVID-19, fatigue in New Jersey

Jamie Samuels, a med-surg registered nurse at Centennial, Colo.-based Centura Health, was one of 34 caregivers who traveled to New Jersey to help several hospitals combat COVID-19.

Samuels was sent to Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth on April 21, while some of her peers are helping St. Joseph’s Health and St. Peter’s Healthcare System. The industry is stronger when there’s collaboration over competition, she said.

“As far as heroes go, everyone that continues to pull together and give some of themselves to make it through this, there is heroism in that,” said Samuels, who will be there through May 17. “Even if you have only a little to give, whether it’s time, donations or a touch at the bedside, it goes very far.”

The caregivers had a hero’s send-off and reception, but reality hit quickly, said Peter Banko, president and CEO of Centura.

“They are around a tremendous amount of death,” said Banko, recalling one story of a Centura nurse who was working with a New Jersey orthopedist doing palliative care. “Everyone is thankful for their help and happy to assist, but they stepped into a different reality of what they were experiencing in Colorado.”

At Trinitas, one of Samuels’ younger patients was having difficulty coping. While his health was improving, he shared a room with an elderly man who was deteriorating quickly. As Samuels and her peers tried to save him, she looked out of the corner of her eye and could see the fear in the young man’s eyes.

“He was so broken down,” she said. “We had tried to find his family, but he was just coming out of a three-week fog and couldn’t remember their phone number. I saw that hunger for socialization, communication and love. Sometimes people are dying not because the medicine isn’t working, but from isolation.”

A renewed emphasis on the empathetic and social elements of healthcare would go a long way, she said. More redundancy in staffing and the supply chain would also help along with unit-specific emergency training, Samuels said.

Trinitas was able to stockpile personal protective equipment like N95 masks after the AIDS crises and 9/11. But conflicting guidance from federal agencies on when to wear PPE led to some caregivers getting sick, Samuels said.

Early during the pandemic in Colorado, Samuels was getting ready for work, equipped with just a paper mask. Her husband was walking her to her car when she started to cry.

“He asked what was wrong. I said I am not scared to die, but I will be so resentful if there wasn’t some effort to protect me,” Samuels said. “I feel like I have been sent to war with a bikini and a squirt gun.”

When she arrived in New Jersey, a nurse told her that one night she arrived for work, and no one else showed up because they all got sick.

“She was not feeling well and was scared to death,” Samuels said. “Their numbers were doubling every day.”

Her patient load at Trinitas is more than double what she handles in a typical day in Colorado, and that at times leaves her feeling helpless, she said.

“As I look into my phone this morning, I am not even quite sure who I am looking at,” Samuels said during a recent video blog post. “The fatigue and energy of this assignment takes a lot out of a person. I feel like I have aged 100 years in 10 days.”

The morning of April 30, she got word that three patients had died in her unit. “One of those people wasn’t much older than my own child,” she said through tears.

Healthcare administrators need to prepare to provide more resources and support for staff, said Banko, noting that Centura offered up to a week of paid time off if employees exhausted their regular PTO, guaranteed wages of $15 an hour, expanded mental wellness services, helped pay for groceries and offered child-care services. They also sent human resources specialists to New Jersey to help caregivers process their experiences.

While a third of Centura’s revenue was erased overnight when elective surgeries were canceled, Banko said the sole focus needs to be on the caregivers. “This is a very traumatic situation, so we have to be prepared to stand up more services and provide the support they need for as long as they need it,” he said.