Amanda Ketterling, 27, joined Sanford Well being in Bismarck 10 years in the past as an authorized nursing assistant. She’s been a nurse for about 4 years, initially drawn to the sphere after seeing how well being employees cared for her grandfather and household when he died, and from a need to assist folks.
She’s been a cost nurse, or head nurse on a shift, in Sanford’s 24-bed COVID-19 unit, which is served by about 30 nurses on employees rotating on 12-hour shifts. Numerous well being care specialists, corresponding to an intensivist and pulmonologist, additionally take care of sufferers, who’ve separate rooms. Cameras assist monitor sufferers.
Caring for the sufferers includes reassurance and dealing collectively, in response to Ketterling. Sufferers could be scared or unsure of their prognosis, however the hardest half is being with out household, she mentioned.
“(Household) is often what provides them consolation,” she mentioned.
Sufferers are in a position to name household on the phone and use iPads for video calls. Nurses present common updates to relations, as nicely.
Intensive care unit nurse Jess Kurtz helped tackle CHI St. Alexius’ first hospitalized case, “fortunately,” she mentioned. Another nurses are pregnant or have situations corresponding to bronchial asthma, and she or he needed to step up.
She wears a respirator, robe, gloves and goggles in CHI St. Alexius’ COVID-19 unit, which changed the common, 15-bed ICU, which is now in one other space for different intensive care sufferers. Ketterling wears basically the identical gear.