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NCMC Critical Care Nurse - Takes to the Skies

Covid 19 and Beyond

I came to Greeley/UNC in 1993 as a transfer student. I started working as a CNA and EMT at NCMC May 3, 1994 with hopes of medical school. NCMC was still a local community managed hospital at the time, and although there has been A LOT of change in it (and the community), the roots of that sense of "working at the local community hospital" is one of the things I am still so proud of 27 years later. Family practice medicine was quite a bit different back then. After seeing the life toll paid by family practice doc's, I opted to finish my biology degree with a Secondary Education Certificate. My wife and I met at UNC and both graduated with education degrees a few years later. Teaching here in District 6 and Kersey PV7 we got a sense of Greeley as "home". Despite a variety of education and amazing employment opportunities elsewhere, I found it hard to leave bedside patient care and the medical field and continued to work part time at the hospital. Years rolled by bringing us four kids. While they were young, I decided to re-dedicate my career to health care and returned to UNC for a degree in Nursing on scholarship from the NCMC Foundation. Starting out as a new nurse in the ICU was not common and was a lot to take on, but my time at NCMC, skilled mentorship, and team support helped me thrive and now, over 13 years into nursing, I continue to grow and learn every day.

I had always felt like I had missed an opportunity to serve in the military and nine years ago, I discovered the Air Force had Critical Care Air Transport Teams (CCATT), and knew this was a chance to serve and practice ICU nursing in a truly intense new way. I currently serve as a Major with the 153 Air Wing in Cheyenne doing what I train to do every day at NCMC, but then get to take that into a C-130, C-17, KC135 or Blackhawk anywhere in the world and bring our sick and injured soldiers back from rough situations.

My kids are the root of my hobbies and they are, what I believe, is a testament to what growing up in Greeley/Evans and a public school District 6/UNC/Aims/AP/dual enrollment education can yield if kids take advantage of all that is offered and work hard. My son is now a Mechanical (Propulsion) Engineer for an air and space vehicle development company, one daughter is working to be a NICU nurse after she finishes her first B.A. at CSU on a full ride Monfort scholarship she earned, another daughter will be attending UNC in the fall studying voice and performing art, and our third daughter is in high school looking toward agricultural or equine science. Living here surrounded by agriculture, good careers, opportunities, being close to both bigger cities and the mountains, Greeley has always been a great place to call home.

What has been the most challenging thing while caring for COID-19 patients?

  • Aside from unprecedented patient care and family needs, the greatest challenge was separating fact from fiction, assumption from science, determining lead and authority (Chain-of-Command) and balancing logical and emotional responses. This directly correlates with military service, and in particular, Officer School. The concept of “identify all threats, assess, plan, communicate, execute, adjust, repeat” were daily challenges to keep up with at all levels. Communication within this is so important. When communication within the chain-of-command is not effective the system fails. We became experts at managing this challenge as a team and facility. This is where the function of individuals and teams is truly tested.

  • Having to limit visitation, especially at end-of-life, has also been very hard on all of our staff, not to mention devastating for the community. Guiding patients and families through that natural process is important to us and not being able to do what we normally do takes a toll on the soul. At the same time, I am not sure it would have been good for the community at-large to come into the ICU for visitation. Given the extent of the operation we had going in ICU we would have been tripping all over each other and I think it would have compromised our ability to do the rest of what needed to be done to save lives.

  • The parallels between this pandemic, critical care nursing, and the military are universal. The takeaways are the importance of team and how to reprioritize elements of care to the essential needs of people, the community, and each other as a team. It’s what Officer Training School was all about – “Lead: Do everything, with nothing, have it done yesterday, and minimize casualties.” We have to reprioritize to execute the mission: in order to maximize positive outcomes, utilization of resources, and support individual and group resiliency for this and the next inevitable challenge. Those reprioritized elements are so extensive, but basically everyone in every other profession around the world had to do the same thing… reprioritize and roll with it. In CCATT we use the phrase “Adjust, Adapt, Overcome.” No matter how overwhelming a situation can be, team is how we overcome and our NCMC team may not always agree on all the details (like any family) but when the chips are down I wouldn’t choose any other team on the planet and when you look at the evidence of what we did here I would confidently put our team up against anyone, any pandemic, any where, any time because of our ability to reprioritize to essential needs and execute the plan as a team.


 

Nurses and Doctors are being called heroes through out the pandemic.  What kind of heroes have you witnessed?

  • The expression “Heros” makes me twitch. I understand that it is a term of appreciation and respect and people need to express those things. I, and many of my team, are not sure how to respond to this idea. (Just feed us, we like food!). Once again, like in military service, we do the essence of this job every day. Every threat has its differences, but we have done the essence of our jobs through H1N1, child suicide, and hundreds of other life or death battles that we face with our patients and families daily. It is our passion and our purpose. We are just a bunch of people with different skills who were blessed with the gift to serve our community (in mass).  It’s hard for me to think of us as heroes, but protectors, providers, team. In other words: I have witnessed ordinary, skilled, passionate people and teams doing unheard-of procedures, providing unprecedented care, with unrivaled compassion and limited resources, in previously inconceivably large numbers. At one point I counted our unit caring for 36 patients on what would have previously been considered “beyond normal life support” and ventilators in a previously 16 bed ICU with, unparalleled survival rates. UN-HEARD-OF! 

  • I want to thank the community for their support. We remain here steadfast as protectors and providers for you, no matter what the need. I would stress that we are not yet through this pandemic.  People are still coming in with COVID, people are still on the ventilators.  Vaccination is important and makes a difference.

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