Hospital heroes

Prior to May 16 when they received their first COVID-19 patient, health workers at the Spanish Town Hospital in St Catherine were gripped with fear and were anxious as they watched the pandemic’s unfolding crisis in developed countries.

Officials went into emergency mode as the hospital was retrofitted to prepare for the inevitable surge that would threaten oxygen supplies and put systems at breaking point.

Medical staff turned their focus to striking the balance between self-protection and treating patients diagnosed with the highly contagious respiratory disease.

That was a mandate borne by frontline workers across Jamaica - whether at Spanish Town, Cornwall Regional, National Chest, or Sav-la-Mar - who have, en bloc, received the 2020 RJRGLEANER Honour Award for Health and Wellness.

STRESSFUL TIME

One word captured the mood for accident and emergency room worker Dr Celia-Ann Miller-Thomas: stressful.

In the early months of the outbreak in Jamaica, stigma and discrimination stalked persons who contracted the disease, drawing condemnation and threats to life and property. The mildest sneeze could be a clarion call to arms.

Frontline workers, too, feared that some patients with other complications would withhold disclosure of suspected, or confirmed, COVID-19 infections.

“We came to work with fear, wondering, ‘Am I going to get COVID?’” Miller-Thomas told The Gleaner.

Only about three per cent of the Spanish Town Hospital’s staff has been diagnosed with COVID-19, with at least one doctor and two nurses requiring admission.

The institution, which sees as many as 450 patients daily, has more than 170 doctors, 190 registered nurses, and hundreds of other support staff.

In retrospect, Miller-Thomas said she might have been a bit overzealous at the beginning of the pandemic.

“On entering my car, I would spray my jacket, spray my shoes bottom, sanitise, and then enter,” she recalled, admitting that her routine is a bit less meticulous.

That more relaxed response coincides with the plunge in COVID-19 infections in Jamaica after a series of weekend lockdowns and gathering restrictions, implemented late March, turned the tide after hospitals buckled under mass admissions and patients gasped amid an oxygen crisis.

As at July 2, Jamaica recorded 50,312 COVID-19 cases and 1,084 deaths.

The country entered community spread in August 2020, upending contact-tracing strategies and sparking a lurch towards catastrophe in February and March 2021.

Miller-Thomas said she has learnt some key lessons.

“In a pandemic, it doesn’t matter how somebody looks, it doesn’t matter where they are coming from. It doesn’t matter the colour of their skin, as far as I’m concerned, anybody can have COVID and so, therefore, at no point I should let down my guard,” she said.

CONTRACTING COVID

Despite efforts to protect herself, registered nurse Doraine Thyme still contracted the coronavirus.

The healthcare worker, who attends to the hospital’s more critical patients following positive diagnoses, said her symptoms were mild. Although she was aware of the risks, Thyme summoned up courage and was impelled by a call to duty.

“I try to do the best I can to the best of my ability so that I can go home with an open conscience, because it is easier to sleep as a health worker when you have tried your best,” she said.

Her colleague, La-shaun Lewis, has also been mindful that she is exposed to COVID-19 daily. The fear of passing it on to her family has kept her away from them for the past year. She made the decision to not go back home to her Hanover community from the initial phase of the pandemic.

The 26-year-old nurse described the last 15 months as an emotional roller coaster.

“It really takes a toll on you when you see persons dying. Then when you look at these persons in certain age groups that you are in and you put yourself in their shoes, and you are like, ‘This could possibly be me,’” she said.

Senior resident Ryan Brooks can relate to the emotional impact on medical practitioners as they treat patients. They celebrate as the patient shows signs of improvement and are disheartened when they die.

“Several patients have tugged at me, because we take them through sometimes a good outcome; many times, a bad outcome as well, and you would be talking to the relatives and, you know, try to give them hope, while at the same time measuring out the reality that is there,” said Brooks, who has been a doctor for 13 years.

He has struggled to compartmentalise his emotions in a bid to insulate himself so that death does not sap him of the drive to tend to the living.

Senior Medical Officer at Spanish Town Hospital, Dr Jacqueline Wright James, has experienced the most tumultuous period of her 20-year career. As a team leader, she has to motivate the medical staff to keep them going when the job gets difficult.

She describes her frontliners as resilient professionals.

“I know we do have our challenges, and sometimes we can get a little bit derailed; but overall, everybody, most people, are just major team players and I think that is what has helped us to manage all the various challenges that have come our way,” Wright James said.

Chief executive officer at the hospital, Dwayne Francis, has high praise for his staff, whom he has described as the best in the local healthcare sector.

He has given special credit to staffers for turning out even when during the weeks-long lockdown of St Catherine in 2020.

“They have worked wonders. They have charged into the fight when persons would want to run away,” Francis told The Gleaner.

“... They have provided of themselves, far beyond what we would have expected, without a murmur.”

editorial@gleanerjm.com