More North Carolina doctors and nurses step in to care for COVID-19 patients
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Dr. Seth Weinreb, a veteran surgeon, prepared for weeks for his tour in UNC Rex Hospital’s ICUs, including its special isolation unit for people infected with the coronavirus.
A few days before his week-long hospital duty in mid-April, Weinreb said he was nervous but proud that he had the skills to step into a critical role.
Weinreb was part of a pilot project at the hospital that had doctors who don’t usually work in ICUs take shifts caring for people with COVID-19.
“It was a pretty powerful experience,” he said in an interview Friday. “I felt like we were really well-prepared and I think we definitely made a difference,” he said.
Seeing how COVID-19 patients overwhelmed hospitals in New York City and Italy, hospitals in the Triangle moved to prepare more doctors and nurses to care for patients infected with the coronavirus. The dramatic surge hasn’t happened here. But hospital administrators say that they are prepared for whatever comes next.
UNC Rex plans to have doctors who are trained in critical care — including surgeons, pulmonologists and anesthesiologists — work with the hospital’s critical care specialists, said Dr. Francis Castiller, who leads the critical care team at UNC Rex.
More nurses at UNC Rex and UNC Hospitals are being trained to care for COVID-19 patients.
UNC Rex is getting ready for more COVID-19 patients this summer and is expecting more people with serious illnesses other than COVID-19 — those who were putting off coming in for fear of becoming infected with the coronavirus - to be admitted to the hospital.
“We’re going to need to spread our critical care capability across a broader number of patients,” said Joel Ray, chief nursing officer and vice president of patient care services at UNC Rex Healthcare.
Nurses at UNC Rex are rotating through its ICUs, and 1,250 have completed online training for COVID-19 patient care, Ray said.
The preparations will make hospitals ready for a patient increase that may come as more businesses open, or if a second wave of infections sweeps the state later this year.
“We certainly don’t feel like we’re done,” said Cathy Madigan, chief nursing officer at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill.
The focus at UNC Hospitals was on training nurses who weren’t as busy — surgical nurses, recovery room nurses, and some clinical care nurses — as the hospitals emptied in preparation for COVID-19 patients. Floor nurses were trained to work with patients who need an intermediate level of care, and nurses who work at the intermediate-care level were trained to work in ICUs.
“I think it makes us better prepared to respond to future emergencies,” Madigan said.
Marie DeRusso, a nurse at UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill, got a call from her supervisor last week telling her she’d be working on the COVID-19 unit.
She was anxious about the assignment.
“The thought of it sounds scary,” said DeRusso, who has been a nurse for almost three years.
DeRusso works on a surgical floor, but had been learning about caring for patients infected with the coronavirus. Her 12-hour shift on a COVID-19 unit went better than she expected. She had it in her mind that nurses on the unit would be on edge, but the atmosphere was encouraging, positive and reassuring, she said.
“All my anxiety was eased,” she said.
Dr. Peter Ng, chairman of North Carolina Surgery, took one of the earlier shifts in the COVID-19 isolation unit at UNC Rex.
Rex administrators worked with the surgeons in the group on plans to have them work with the hospital’s critical care doctors.
“It was really eye opening for me to see how profoundly sick those patients are and the effort that’s going on to save their lives,” Ng said.
With all the attention paid to preventing transmission — negative-pressure rooms, hand-washing, and the proper use of personal protective equipment — Ng said his risk of becoming exposed to the virus was extremely low.
“I have some more anxiety about being out in the community where the people around you aren’t necessarily wearing masks,” he said.
This story was originally published May 10, 2020 at 8:15 AM with the headline "More North Carolina doctors and nurses step in to care for COVID-19 patients."
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