This is part of our occasional series called Portraits in Healthcare to capture the changes happening in healthcare due to COVID-19 as experienced by providers.
Robert Dandurand, 50, left his night shift as an ICU nurse at Banner last year after a former employer—a ballot printing company—made him a great offer. And in an election year, business has been good. But as he watched the need for clinicians to treat COVID-19 grow, Dandurand recently signed up to start grabbing ICU shifts during his off hours. This is his story as told to FierceHealthcare and edited for length and clarity.
My plan was just to get back in and work weekends at the hospital—and then all this COVID stuff popped up.
I started hearing rumors about it in January and February, and I started getting serious about trying to get a job and get back in because I felt like I have a skill that can help people and that I should do something.
I really enjoy ICU. I enjoy it because I love the technical aspect of it that goes with being an ICU nurse. But I also love the one-on-one with the patients you get. I feel that is the most fulfilling to me. I’ve worked on an observation unit and I felt like I was herding cattle. In ICU, granted, every now and then you’ll get a really sick patient and things get crazy. But for the most part, you get to spend a lot of quality time with your patient and their family. And I enjoy that combination.
I just got cleared and I'll be able to work in three hospitals on the west side of Phoenix: Del Webb, Boswell and Estrella. I'm not super nervous. I'm pretty careful. I'm pretty methodical about taking precautions. And I guess my drive to help people is a bit greater than my fear of the virus. If I didn't have this commitment of this other job, I probably would've taken travel assignments back east to go to where the help is needed. But I can't leave the people I'm working with high and dry.
From what I gather, you'll wear a mask, and if you're taking care of a COVID patient, you'll have to don a PPE before taking care of that patient. Then you're out of the room, you're still going to be taking precautions. I know they have a couple of designated units at some of the hospitals. As far as I know, other hospitals have tried proning patients and the typical things you do for patients with severe ARS to some of those things that don't respond to those treatments.
I was having this conversation with my mom. She's kind of far-right politically and I'd say I'm more in the center—not left or right, but more pragmatic. She'll say "Oh, more people will die of a heart attack." The one thing I explain to her that relates back to the healthcare system is, "More people may die of that. We're finding out this may have a mortality rate of like a really severe flu season, right?" But I said: "Everything else doesn't hit the hospital all at once. Like I work in the ICU. Imagine we've only got 24 ICU beds and 50 patients in need of a ventilator. What do you do? That directly affects us and that's the problem with this virus."
It may not be as lethal as it is so sudden. I'm always educating her and anyone else I talk to that, "Hey, this impacts what we're going to be doing in the hospital because we just don't have the resources to deal with it."
Are you a provider with a story about COVID-19 you'd like to share for our Portraits in Healthcare series, we'd love to hear it. Please email [email protected]. Please include a photo that can be used with your story and a telephone number where you can be reached if your story is selected.