ICU nurse Tiffany Pennington worries less for her safety now, more about her patients

Tiffany Pennington doesn’t know if her patients can hear her, but she speaks to them as though they can.

As they lie in the Atrium Health Pineville ICU sedated and intubated, fighting the COVID-19 virus, Pennington does the myriad tasks an ICU nurse must do during the course of a 12-hour shift, all while talking to them as though they could answer back.

“I heard you like gardening!” she’ll say to a patient whose family member has given her, by phone, a snapshot of their loved one’s life. Or she’ll flip on a patient’s favorite TV show or music station in the hopes that maybe for a little while it’ll bring comfort.

The bedside chairs are empty these days in Atrium Health Pineville and in hospitals across the country, as the coronavirus pandemic has changed everything about how people recover there, and the way they die.

With the exception of the final hour before death, there is no family allowed in the room.

“I always try to take the opportunity to ask my families when I’m on the phone with them, ‘Tell me a little bit about your family member that I’m taking care of. How long have you been married? What are they like?’” Pennington said during a recent Zoom call with a reporter.

She makes a point during each shift of asking family members if they’d like her to put them on speakerphone so they can talk to the patient as she works in the room. “Hearing is the last thing to go,” she tells them.

“I think it brings comfort to the families as well, to give them that opportunity to talk to their loved ones. You never know if that’s the last time they’re going to be able to tell them that they love them.”

So much has changed in the 16-bed ICU unit where Pennington has worked for the last seven months, after she and her husband moved their family of five to the Charlotte area from Lexington, S.C.

Instead of working her shift in an Atrium T-shirt and scrub pants, as she did until a couple of months ago, she must now report to the hospital 20 minutes early for a medical screening and to change out of her street clothes and into surgical scrubs, booties, a surgical head cover and an N95 mask.

Every time she goes into or out of a patient’s room she must “don and doff,” or put on and take off, a gown and face shield.

Once every shift is over, she changes completely out of the clothes she wore on the floor and back into the clothes she wore in that morning. Once she’s home, she heads straight for the shower.

Pennington’s husband, Terry, is also a nurse, but he works from home in the insurance industry. They have two girls and a boy: Taylor, 17; Titus, 5, and Tinsley, 3.

When Pennington first learned that she’d be taking care of COVID-19 patients, she worried for her own health and that of her family. But she said she doesn’t worry as much anymore.

“Honestly, me walking into a grocery store to buy some items for my family – I’m more concerned about being out there than I am in the hospital,” she said. “Because I know what I’m going into. I know that we have all the proper equipment to protect ourselves and we all take the time to make sure we’re protecting each other.”

What she does take home more these days, however, are concerns for the patients and their families.

“You worry about your patients. I wonder how they’re doing. I can’t wait to go back to work and find out how they are,” she said. “I think it’s a little bit more tough, more challenging than it was before. You kind of always think about things.”

Cristina Bolling is managing editor of the Charlotte Ledger. This article is published in partnership with the Ledger, an e-newsletter focusing on local news in Charlotte.