‘I’m not going to lie. When COVID hit, it was surreal.’ Nurses recount fear of early days

New mother Lauren Caldevilla was two weeks back at her hospital job when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Miami.

It was March 2020 and she had just returned from maternity leave. Suddenly, her 3-month-old Julian was in the almost full-time care of her husband who could work from home.

Working around the clock

Caldevilla, a nurse educator at UHealth – the University of Miami Health System, and her co-workers had to create a COVID Unit, with maximum barriers, in just 48 hours.

“It was a combined effort. We took turns,” Caldevilla said. “But it was very scary for me.

“We worked until 10, 11 at night. As a brand-new mommy, I didn’t know if I was going to give it to my baby. At the beginning, we didn’t know how this thing spread.”

For Caldevilla, and other nurses on the frontlines, the unknown was the most frightening aspect of the pandemic’s early days.

“Last March, when COVID hit, it was surreal. I’m not going to lie,” said Kristin Percival Schmalz, a nurse at Memorial Hospital Pembroke, who volunteered to be “charge nurse” of the dedicated COVID-19 ER.

She helped develop the hospital’s first COVID unit protocols and served as a liaison with local fire rescue.

Scary days in the beginning

“There was some fear at first, mostly because no one knew anything about the virus and we were all figuring it out together. Things got real for me after we intubated our first suspected COVID patient in the closed isolation room we created for this procedure,” Percival Schmalz said.

“It was just the physician, myself, and respiratory all in full suits and hoods while other staff waited behind the secure door, if we needed back up, to prevent transmission.

“He was so sick and, unfortunately, also was our first death. That’s when I saw firsthand the full severity of how sick people can get from COVID.”

Nurse Rachel Chavez was just six months into her employment at Broward Health Imperial Point. Overnight, her job as a nurse manager became educating on the latest CDC guidelines. She leads 70 caregivers in the Progressive Care Unit.

“We have sweated, laughed, learned and cried together over the last year,” Chavez said. “All of this has only strengthened our team, motivated and inspired us to continue to do what we love — provide nursing care.

“I have learned that there is nothing that nurses cannot do. During the most-challenging times, we always believe in what we can accomplish, so we do.”

Vaccinating front-line workers

This year, Chavez also took on the hospital’s temporary COVID-19 vaccination clinic for frontline workers. She helped vaccinate more than 1,000 caregivers and staff.

“When asked if she could handle the additional duties she replied, ‘I want to be a part of the solution.’ She is a servant leader and we are grateful to have her as a part of the team,” said Netonua Reyes, chief nursing officer and chief operating officer at Broward Health Imperial Point.

Over at UHealth, Caldevilla worked tirelessly to train skilled critical care nurses. She and nurse educator Diana Levy quickly picked a special team to push through a residency program.

“These nurses were hand selected because of their hard work and dedication during the pandemic.

“Their residency program was one of the shortest programs because we desperately needed critical care skill nurses at the bedside and they superseded our expectations,” she said.

Caldevilla said Levy created the program in just five weeks and “was the most vital part of the team.”

Humbleness and gratitude to others seem to come with the nurse job description.

For Chavez, knowing her staff loves coming to work because of what they have all accomplished “makes the hard work worth it.”

Supporting each other

“We provided meals, lockers for our nurses and technicians to store their belongings so that they could change while at work, a Zen room where they could go to decompress, and frequent rounding by the employee assistance program to ensure that their mental health stayed a priority,” Chavez said.

And when nurses were in tears over patients who succumbed to COVID-19, her co-workers said Chavez was there to lend emotional support.

Now, as vaccinations increase, and COVID-19 cases decrease, the nurses can reflect, somewhat.

“As a team, we celebrate the saves and mourn the losses together,” Percival Schmalz said. “We all trained and mentally prepared for what was to come, and no one complained.

“We all just kept coming in and helping each other, whether that be picking up extra shifts or just making each other laugh.”

Caldevilla said she was also grateful to the leadership at UHealth for protecting its medical staff.

“We got the support and equipment we needed to stay safe,” Caldevilla said. “Now, we all have to think of the bigger picture.

“We need more humanity. We need to do what the nurses did. They put others first. They are very selfless people. They put people they didn’t know ahead of themselves. Ahead of their own families,” she said.

“If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have survived this year.”