Cheery faces of night-shift nurses boost spirits of patients, families during pandemic

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    RACINE, Wis. (The Journal Times) — “I think I’m allergic to sun. I am much more awake at night,” Gary Homeier joked as he walked out of Ascension All Saints Thursday morning, clearly smiling underneath his face mask.

Homeier, an award-winning registered nurse, is one of the night-shifters stationed in the COVID unit All Saints, Racine County’s biggest hospital, 3801 Spring St.

Although Ascension Health does not share numbers of how many hospital beds are filled at its facilities, COVID units statewide have been more full in recent weeks than they were months ago. According to the Department of Health Services, more than 700 COVID patients are currently hospitalized throughout southeastern Wisconsin; that’s down from a high of 984 the week before Thanksgiving, but is still higher than any total reported before Nov. 3.

Still, early Thursday morning, as medical professionals like Homeier left the building, spirits seemed high as friends new and old chatted at the end of the night shift.

Treating families and patients

During normal times, families and loved ones are able to visit the sick (and sometimes dying) in the intensive care unit, they can’t do that often and sometimes can’t do it at all during the pandemic; Ascension’s visitor policy has switched between no visitations to visitations under certain circumstances since March.

As such, nurses have taken on the role of being the “communication device between patients and the family,” said Homeier, who lives in Kenosha. “When the family is not here, you cannot see what’s going on, and that creates anxiety and panic and concern … not only do we treat the patient, but we also treat the family.”

To counteract that, “we call the contact person (for each patient) every day for an update,” added Leah Borchardt, a nurse practitioner from Waterford who works side-by-side with Homeier; she’s another night-shifter by choice and has been for the past decade.

Kristin McManmon, regional president of Ascension All Saints Hospital, noted that it takes “a special kind of person” to be a critical care health care provider, especially on the night shift, saying that people like Homeier and Borchardt (whose cheery demeanors can be a light in the darkness) are especially proving their worth right now.

A party-less holiday season

The fact that the end of the pandemic may be in sight, even if it’s still many months away, has heightened spirits. They chatted about how Pfizer’s vaccine could get federal emergency approval this week, with thousands of high-risk Wisconsinites likely to get their first dose before the end of 2020. They also talked about Christmas plans, mutual friends and looking forward to getting to bed even as the sun rose.

Usually, at the end of the year, each hospital shift’s staff gathers for a celebratory meal around Christmastime, a big mid-shift party in the hospital cafeteria. This year — with social distancing still being strictly enforced — the night shift’s doctors, nurses and non-medical staff were gifted with a take-home meal as they headed out the doors Thursday morning.

It’s “Christmas without the big party,” McManmon called it, doing her best to remain upbeat in extraordinary times.

Lifesaving floaters amid shortages

The lifesavers this year have been the “floating” medical professionals, who are oftentimes nurses either contracted through outside agencies or were part of Ascension Wisconsin’s pre-established “regional resource pool,” meaning they know they could be assigned to any different Ascension hospital at any time.

Among those floaters are people like Nicolle Smith, who lives in Decatur, Iowa, but usually switches from one Ascension hospital to the next on a weekly basis, going wherever she is needed. This week, she’s been in All Saints’ emergency room, where one of her main tasks has been triaging patients with breathing problems and either sending them home with a treatment plan or admitting them to the hospital if their condition is serious enough.

Regional resource pools existed before the pandemic; Ascension has two in Wisconsin, one for the state’s southern half (which Smith is part of) and one for the northern half.

Workers in those pools have been invaluable throughout the pandemic since they are so malleable and can react to surges in hospitalizations. Their importance has been redoubled during the pandemic as hospital beds and large numbers of medical professionals miss work due to coming into contact with the virus or catching it in the community.

Other floaters at All Saints this week have come all the way from Oklahoma and Atlanta after being contracted through an outside agency to fill in as medical staffs nationwide have been stretched thin.

According to preliminary data from DHS, 176 Wisconsin health care workers were experiencing symptoms the final week of November, the lowest total the state has seen in a month-and-a-half and down from a Nov. 1 high of 1,138; more recent data were not available Thursday.

“The weight on their shoulders is immense and they are doing an incredible job. Every day they are putting their lives on the line,” Gov. Tony Evers said of frontline medical workers during a Thursday call with reporters.

Shortage isn’t only a pandemic symptom

Federal medical professionals have been repeatedly tapped to close gaps in Wisconsin throughout the pandemic. It was announced on Wednesday that 45 U.S. Army medics were being deployed to serve at four hospitals in the rural-focused Marshfield Clinic health care system. Also, from Aug. 9-Sept. 10, 13 federal Department of Veterans Affairs employees were deployed to the Wisconsin Veterans Home in Dover when a breakout there claimed 10 patients lives and led to 56 infections.

“In our state, we were already struggling to find health care workers before the pandemic,” Evers continued. “The need for more staff to treat patients remains a challenge.”

“Our staffing shortage is absolutely a focus for us,” added DHS Secretary-designee Andrea Palm.

Last year, the Wisconsin Hospital Association published a report that stated “Wisconsin needs 100 new physicians a year.” Although that report showed the numbers of medical school enrollments were growing, they face the pressure of turning the tide of keeping more physicians in the state instead of leaving it. WHA found that, in 2011 and 2016, around 1,100 more physicians left Wisconsin to practice elsewhere as compared to new physicians coming into the state, while in 2018 there were 400 more physicians staying in Wisconsin than there were physicians who left.

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