These San Diego nurses took jobs in COVID-19 hot zones. Here are their stories – The San Diego Union-Tribune

A former Navy nurse who did two tours in Afghanistan, Cynthia Lam has always felt compelled to do her part for the country.

So in late March, Lam flew from San Diego to the greater New York City area to work for eight weeks at a hospital on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

Analise Eastman left her San Diego nursing job shortly before the coronavirus flared up, planning to travel abroad before starting graduate school.

Instead, she drove 31 hours to Chicago for a 12-week crisis response position at a hospital short-staffed because of the outbreak.

Elena Johns had stepped away from intensive care nursing to pursue her doctorate at the University of San Diego and focus on her passion, hospice care.

When she learned quarantined COVID-19 patients were dying alone, however, Johns returned to the ICU for a four-week assignment at a hospital in Brooklyn.

Dying alone is unacceptable to me, she said. If nothing else, I can go and be there for that person if the family cant be there.

Despite the risk of exposure to the deadly virus, these three San Diego health care providers signed on as travel nurses, taking short-term positions at hospitals hit hard by the pandemic.

They got the assignments through San Diegos Aya Healthcare, which links hospitals with contract labor nationwide. Aya has filled more than 5,200 crisis jobs since the outbreak began.

Another San Diego-based company, AMN Healthcare, also provides travel nurses to medical facilities, as well as other medical specialists. Since mid-March, AMN has placed more than 10,000 health care workers.

Lam and Eastman are first-time travel nurses. Johns has done it before. While each of their stories is different, they have a few things in common.

They either are enrolled in graduate school or are headed there to become nurse practitioners. When classes moved online, they gained the flexibility to travel while continuing their studies.

They all sought to go where they were most needed. Hospitals in the San Diego region have not been overrun with COVID-19 patients at least so far.

All said the supply of personal protective equipment, including N-95 masks, has been good. They have been vigilant and meticulous with safety gear to avoid putting themselves at risk.

And theyve had both heartbreaking and touching experiences along the way. Here are their stories.

Former Navy nurse Cynthia Lam expects to work through June as an ICU nurse at a hospital in Connecticut, just outside of New York City, helping COVID-19 patients.

(Cynthia Lam)

Lam, 34, works in the ICU at a hospital in Stamford, Conn., about 40 miles outside New York City. She puts in four, 12-hour shifts per week. Early on, she would pick up extra shifts because the hospital was fairly overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.

In some ways, the work reminds Lam of her time as a Navy nurse in Afghanistan when the call came to drop a nine-line, or medivac casualties from the battlefield.

Every day you are like go, go, go because these patients are very sick and they decompensate very quickly, she said. Sometimes you feel helpless because youve exhausted all of the typical life-saving measures that just dont seem to be as effective in this population.

Now a reservist, Lam spent eight years as a military nurse, most recently working at the Balboa Naval Medical Center. After leaving active duty, she began full-time graduate school while working per diem as a fill-in nurse at local hospitals.

With the coronavirus, Lam thought she would pick up more hospital shifts locally. But she didnt.

The cases were pretty low in San Diego, she said. They canceled a lot of elective surgeries. I just felt like I wasnt being utilized as an ICU nurse. I was like, there are people who need me in the Northeast, and Im sitting here in San Diego in my backyard, hanging out.

So Lam tried travel nursing. Its been a whirlwind few weeks. When she was hired, the hospital wanted her to start in six days. That meant finding a place to live across the country on short notice. The Airbnbs she contacted were either too expensive or taken.

I would say, Oh really, because its still online, said Lam. It was almost like they were concerned, rightfully so, about having someone in health care in their house.

She tried an apartment complex, but it did not offer furnished units. They began inquiring about me, and I told them I was just coming for eight weeks to help with the crisis, said Lam. What they ended up doing was buying stuff from Amazon and furnishing the apartment for me. They were super helpful.

Lams hospital has one ICU unit. For the outbreak, it converted three other rooms into pop-up ICUs. During her first few weeks there, Lam worked mostly in the main ICU with very critical patients.

I am a positive person and dont let things get to me, but in the moment, the deaths seem to pile up and that is sad, she said. I thought my patient yesterday was going to die all day despite all the measures we were doing, and it just hits home because the patient is the same age as my dad, who is 66.

The young patients also are hard. She has cared for people in their 30s, 40s and 50s stricken the virus. She had two pregnant patients.

Its crazy because I think these people are just living their normal lives, she said. Yeah, maybe they have a history of high blood pressure or diabetes or whatever it may be, but theyre living great lives. Its not like they were bed-bound.

Over the past couple of weeks, coronavirus cases have eased. We are discharging a ton, she said. We were able to close one of our pop-up ICUs.

A single mom, Lams teenage daughter is staying with her parents. Lam agreed to extend her assignment for another four weeks, but she is looking forward to time off this summer with her daughter.

It will be nice to have a small break and just be with family, she said.

Analise Eastman, a Point Loma Nazarene graduate, is a first-time travel nurse, working at a hospital in greater Chicago.

At the Chicago-area hospital where Analise Eastman works, the staff plays the Rocky movie theme song over the intercom every time a COVID-19 patient is discharged.

We line up and clap and cheer for them as they leave, she said.

Eastman, 29, graduated from Point Loma Nazarene. She worked in nursing locally for five years before taking a break before grad school. As coronavirus cases grew nationwide, she felt a responsibility to contribute.

If I didnt step in and help the health care system at this time, I honestly would have felt really guilty just sitting around while my fellow nurses are working their butts off.

Eastman is in a telemetry unit, which handles less seriously ill patients than an ICU. Still, she is seeing plenty of COVID patients. Recently, she has been floating to the hospitals designated COVID telemetry floor a lot.

Several patients are receiving oxygen. Sometimes, they are placed in the telemetry unit rather than ICU because of do not resuscitate directives.

So they come to our unit, and they will die there, she said. Its still an intense setting, even without the ventilators and really sick patients, because there are still people dying.

When she first arrived, several nurses in her group were in quarantine after exposure to the virus. I have heard of nurses just living in hotels on the days they are working so they dont bring it home to their families, she said. My boyfriend is here with me. I am so grateful for the support. But I also have this fear that he is going to get it, and of course Im afraid that Im going to get it, but I am trying to be as careful as I can.

Cases are easing slightly at Eastmans hospital, though new COVID-19 admissions still come in every day. Several of the staff previously out sick with COVID are back working now, which has helped relieve the strain on her unit.

The hospital is not allowing visitors. However, it recently began Zoom meetings between a few patients and their families.

The meetings are typically reserved for those nearing end of life, but Eastman has been advocating for wider use.

Each time I have done it so far it has brought tears to some family members eyes and meant a lot to them, she said. One patients family hadnt seen her for two months because she was in a skilled nursing facility before this. They couldnt have been more thankful to see her face and tell her they love her. It brought me to tears, too.

Elena Johns recently returned to San Diego after spending four weeks as a travel nurse caring for coronavirus patients at a hospital in Brooklyn.

(Elena Johns)

Elena Johns, 29, has been an ICU and cardiology nurse for more than four years. A Louisiana native, shes now attending graduate school to become a nurse practitioner specializing in end of life/palliative care. Shes also working fill-in shifts at San Diego hospitals and part-time in hospice.

Johns has been a travel nurse before, and she kept in touch with industry recruiters.

I was getting a lot of emails and texts saying there was a crisis, she said. My classes are all remote. I work per diem and part time, so my schedule is very flexible. They dont really need me in an ICU in San Diego, knock on wood. I can go help.

She started April 8 at a hospital in Brooklyn. The team is very good, she said. The nurses and especially the doctors are very good and very helpful.

But it wasnt what she expected.

I thought it would be more acute in terms of seeing patients when they are admitted, she said. What we me and the nurses who started with me seem to be doing is much more aftermath. These patients have been here for two-plus weeks. We are continuing the care and hoping they that they will get better when the trends are not showing that.

Its almost as if nurses and doctors are having to shift their mindset from saving everyone to thinking more like hospice caregivers. She recalled one patient from the regular COVID floor who came to the ICU struggling to breathe. The doctor told the patient they needed to insert a breathing tube or the patient would die. The patient refused.

The doctor honored the request but I could see the struggle in his eyes and the entire team because we are trained to save, to insert that tube no matter what, said Johns.

The patient died shortly afterward. It is hard for me in that respect, trying to balance my hospice side and my ICU side, said Johns. Some of these patients are just so sick, and theyre not getting better.

Johns has returned to San Diego. She had a scare and got tested for COVID-19 in New York. It came back negative.

When she left, the crisis did appear to be easing. One of the hospitals pop-up ICUs had closed, and emergency room counts were down.

Now shes focusing on school finals and is looking forward to returning to her hospice job. But shes not ruling out another travel nurse assignment later on.

If the need is great in ICUs, then sure, she said. After recovering for a few weeks, I would think about doing it again.

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These San Diego nurses took jobs in COVID-19 hot zones. Here are their stories - The San Diego Union-Tribune