 Hey guys, I wanted to do a little video on what it's like to be a nurse during COVID-19. Little kind of, I don't know, information. I am an ICU nurse and I'm in the state of Arizona, which fortunately has not been hit as bad as some of the other parts of the country. And so I kind of want to share what my experience has been like. And just so you guys know, I know that there are other places where it's been so, so, so much worse. So by me talking about my experience, I am not like ignoring the fact that I know that it's worse other places. So just know my hearts with you guys. I know that we are on the front lines of this and it's been really, really, really, really tough for some people. I also want to kind of open up the discussion in the comments below for you guys to share your experiences about COVID-19 because I know it's been just so different every single place. I would have never thought that like in the United States where we have so many resources and like amazing doctors, amazing like scientists and researchers that we would be having this problem, which is just crazy. But anyways, let me jump into my experience. So I remember the very first patient I took care of that had COVID. Actually at the time we were ruling it out and the tests were coming back like in five to seven days, which was just nuts. But they were like on all the precautions of it. And I just remember how like weird it was as a nurse to like first walk into this room because you hear everything on the media talking about this virus and pandemic and how scary it is in New York. This is happening in Italy. This is happening in China. It's happening. And then I was almost naive to the fact that it eventually would show up like on my own like home turf in the hospital where I was at. But I remember the very first patient that they're like this patient could have COVID. And so I remember just getting all like geared up and walking in and feeling almost like this like eerie feeling of like, is this even real? Like it felt kind of like a movie. Like you see something going on in one area and you just don't picture yourself being that situation. And all of a sudden you're there. So it was very strange at first. And the more that I've like taken care of COVID-19 patients, feel like less scared I am of it. And honestly, like I'm not even scared of it anymore. I was telling people because so many people were like, aren't you nervous to take care of people that have COVID? And I'm like, honestly, I feel better about taking care of patients that have COVID because I'm on all the precautions. Whereas, you know, in other parts of the hospital, they're wearing limited precautions like a mask and of course like gloves and washing their hands and whatnot. But a patient may be on a different floor for several days and suddenly they start getting respiratory symptoms and they're like, oh, let's rule them out for COVID and they come to us. And this whole time, like they've been unknowingly exposing all these other nurses and doctors and techs and RTs and everyone in the hospital. So I actually feel somewhat safer being in my unit where I know I just geared all up regardless if they are positive or rule out and I'm good to go. To be honest, we have not really had like a really big surge where we got overwhelmed at the hospital I'm at, which I'm very, very, very thankful for. We definitely like the social distancing and the quarantining and the self isolating and all that stuff really seem to help at least from what I could tell at my hospital on my end. We honestly started off really, really low census. Like our unit just slowly over time became all COVID. We had one patient that was rule out and then positive and then it was like two and then three and our unit is 24 beds and suddenly it kind of just, it never quite filled up all the way because we would get these patients in and they'd be ruling them out and if they came back negative we'd immediately transfer them to another ICU. So at first I was actually getting called off or floated a ton and I'm still actually getting floated quite a bit because we don't have as many patients on the COVID unit as maybe we do in the other ICUs. So that's been interesting. Like honestly it's, I've never thought I would say this cause like most nurses don't really like to get floated if you have a specific unit that you're with but it's actually been kind of nice when you get floated because it's just a little break from like wearing a gown and gloves and foot covers and head cover and your mask and your N95 and just being very, very diligent about washing your hands so, so, so, so much. I've also wanna kind of talk a little bit about like some extra precautions that I'm taking for my family cause a lot of people have asked me this as well. That basically I am wearing a change of scrubs at work that they're providing us and if we don't have them then I wear my normal scrubs and then I'll change into a different outfit before I go home and I'm just being very diligent about my work stuff versus my home stuff. So my shoes stay in the garage and I wipe those down, wipe down my phone, my keys, my badge and anything that's like attached to me during my shift and immediately when I get home I strip off in the garage throw my clothes in the washer and go take a shower and I wash my hair, I wash everything and then I'm good to go pretty much but I'm not like self isolating from my family. My husband still works in the community as an essential worker as well so we both like are being exposed to it. We have a daughter who's 19 months and we're obviously wanna be very careful what we bring home to her but we do feel like lucky and blessed that this is not seeming to affect kids to the extent that it's affecting adults so that's been kind of relieving for us is just knowing like she may get it but it's not gonna be hopefully as severe as like when an older adult gets it. And then we're just being extra cautious when we have to go out in public, mass washing our hands, all that good stuff, wiping things down when we are going out like the carts and whatnot and just wiping down our steering wheels and all those things so yeah, honestly my experience initially I felt like very, very, very anxious over this whole thing and actually made a video on it about like I was scared to be honest, I was very, very scared seeing what was going on in other places that it was going to be going on the same things were gonna be going on in my area and I for like I almost had like a pre-TSD not like PTSD for post-traumatic stress disorder but almost like a pre-traumatic stress disorder because I was so anxious it was really affecting me personally, mentally. I was more snappy, I was more emotional, I was more anxious and I was scared every time I was going to go to work that we would be out of PPE that I would not be getting support from my management or that things were gonna get crazy, crazy, crazy and luckily they have not gotten like that in our area and maybe they will but at this point it sounds like it probably won't get to that point just cause we're starting to open things up and like we have really maintained our steady flow of these patients so hopefully we'll see but I'm feeling much better about it now and I hope you guys are too I know so many of you are just like in the trenches we had several of our nurses that went to New York and coming back to them telling like their experiences and everything going on is just mind boggling so if you're in one of the areas that's been really, really hit hard my heart goes out to you because like it's nuts it's absolutely nuts but anyways I've been posting updates on my Instagram about like what my experiences like during COVID and all these things so go follow me on there make sure you're subscribed to my channel and give this video a thumbs up and I'll see you guys in my next video, bye.