HOLLAND — Gwen Boeve left a position in the business sector to pursue a career in nursing, seeking a more personal relationship with her patients.
But since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Boeve feels her shifts with patients dealing with COVID-19 cannot be as personal as she’d like them to be.
“I do feel a little bit when I’m taking care of COVID patients that I don’t get to be the nurse that I want to be,” Boeve said. Boeve is a registered emergency room nurse in West Michigan, although The Sentinel isn’t naming the hospital she works at.
“Because we are pulled in so many different directions, taking care of a COVID patient requires so much more resources and energy,” Boeve said. “Even just gowning up in all of our isolation gear, it takes extra time.”
Michigan is in the midst of a significant rise of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths compared to previous months. Health care officials have signaled the increasing cases are placing a strain on hospital capacity.
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For the health care workers combating the pandemic, the rising amount of patients dealing with COVID-19 coupled with waning public support and increasing apathy toward the virus is leading to burnout at work.
’A different feeling of exhaustion’
Burnout in the workplace refers to the apathy that can build up after prolonged stress. The World Health Organization states the three main components to workplace burnout are feelings of exhaustion or depletion, increased cynicism related to work and reduced professional efficacy.
Burnout was already higher in the health care profession compared to most fields, according to a 2018 study.
Boeve said the end of her shift, when another nurse arrives to replace her, has become difficult. The reports she gives on patients dealing with COVID-19 are often grim, she said.
“I just feel so bad, giving reports being like, ’OK, I’m leaving this mess, now it’s your mess,’” she said.
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She commended her hospital for having safety measures designed to keep her and other workers safe, like wearing head-to-toe isolation clothing whenever they interact with a COVID-19 patient. Still, being dressed in the isolation gear for most of the day can be exhausting, she said.
“It’s just a different feeling of exhaustion when you’re done,” Boeve said. “Just all those extra steps that you’re taking between every single patient that you’re seeing. How much time you’re spending getting all gowned up, and then taking everything off and then getting all gowned up all over again.
“Every time you’re in and out of a patient’s room is just exhausting. If you’ve had an N-95 (facemask) on for eight hours at a time, your face is just bruised, you’ve got swelling above the mask near your eyes. They are so tight and so fitted. You’re just exhausted.”
Public apathy frustrating for health care workers
At the start of the pandemic in March, health care workers and others who could not work from home were lauded as frontline heroes, serving the public in the midst of crisis.
Since then, public attitude has shifted overall towards the pandemic. An April poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly half of respondents believed the worst part of the pandemic had already passed.
But since the start of May, over 4,400 Michiganders have died from COVID-19, around half of the state’s total deaths from the virus.
In that same time frame, protests over virus orders have taken place in different parts of the state. Calls from health officials for Michiganders not to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday, particularly as cases mount in Michigan, were also met with derision by some.
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And conspiracy theories over the usage of masks and the pandemic have been amplified — despite pleas from health care workers to take the pandemic seriously.
“It’s astonishing. And it’s heartbreaking, the success of disinformation,” said Jennifer VanSkiver, senior communications manager at North Ottawa Community Health System.
“There is not a scintilla of scientific evidence to support any of that,” she said. “In fact, there is mountainous data to support the opposite. On some occasions, even when people are personally battling (COVID-19), themselves ill, they still deny what is happening. Astonishing.”
Boeve described her hospital system as able to deal with cases so far, but the current trajectory, in which cases continue to rise, could threaten capacity.
“We are every single day on the cusp of being overwhelmed,” she said. “Like within just a couple of patients, just a couple of beds of not having any room to go with anybody.”
Despite this, and health leaders warning the public about health capacity levels, the apathy and disinterest toward virus prevention measures that some still carry is leading to exasperation for her and other health care workers.
“I’m getting to the point where I’m so frustrated with people,” Boeve said. “I just think that that level of self-sacrifice that people aren’t willing to take on is really frustrating.
“It’s really getting hard around here. I know I don’t see it as much in the ER, but I talk with the nurses who are up on the floors. And they’re losing people daily, even in our small hospital. It doesn’t feel real — but just believe that it is and that it’s heartbreaking.”
— Contact reporter Arpan Lobo at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @arpanlobo.
