Three intensive care workers share the stories that have remained hidden from public view during the pandemic.
Dr Katrina Tonga, respiratory consultant
It was an eye opener seeing young people come in with severe respiratory illnesses. We’re used to managing people with respiratory diseases, but not to the extent they were almost on death’s door.
We had to talk to patients on the phone, or, if we were in the room, wearing PPE. They couldn’t have family members or friends so it was really tough on them. It was heartbreaking seeing patients with their whole families in hospital, but they were spread throughout Sydney. Sometimes they hadn’t had any contact until a FaceTime or Skype call.
Having to talk to family members on the phone and trying to relay how sick their family member was, or tell them they were going to pass away, was a really challenging time. In my culture – I’m Tongan – it’s very family oriented, and seeing Pacific islander families coming into hospital, and knowing that’s what they needed, I think some felt a bit more reassured someone could speak to them in their own language.
One of the patients I remember was really quite sick. We were getting him sent to the intensive care unit. He was a young guy, I was on the phone to his wife wheeling him out and he said to me: ‘doctor, am I going to die?’. And I thought in my mind, ‘you could’, but I had to reassure him we were doing everything we could and we were sending him to intensive care to get the treatment he needed.
Courtney Lace, Covid nurse manager
We had a mixed model on the ward – [first we] utilised the negative pressure rooms, then we installed bubbles, then we transitioned the rest of the patients out, and we went full Covid.
It was all staff in full PPE from the minute they arrived. We set up a donning station outside of the ward and had particular nurses supervising the procedure. Their background is neurology, stroke, brain injury and suddenly they were taking patients with respiratory issues – and they just took it in their stride.
The acute patients were very unwell, and it is extremely labour-intensive on the nurses working in those areas, particularly in the bubbles. It’s such a different way of nursing, it’s like a tent on the outside of the four-bedded bay so they’d be zipping through two sets of tent to get into the patient … It’s extremely hot, really dehydrating for the nurses because they’ve got the full PPE on and it steams up really quickly.
We did a transfer late one night, we had about 32 patients on the ward at the time, it was just a particularly busy day, patients were really sick and they deteriorated quickly with the Delta strain … It really hit home seeing how many patients were in and how sick they were. It was very different to getting on the bus and heading home to what was going on inside the hospitals. The public were protected from that.
Dr Priya Nair, director of intensive care
When Covid came, particularly with the second wave, our work changed completely. It was really a once-in-career type experience. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and most of my colleagues haven’t either.
We went from being a 20 bed ICU which had two pods in it … to suddenly having to expand to a four pod ICU to accommodate our Covid patients. We also provide services for Covid patients with very severe lung problems who can’t be looked after in other hospitals … so even though there weren’t a huge number of Covid patients in our local community who needed ICU, we were seeing patients from all across New South Wales. Our workload increased exponentially … We needed many more nursing staff, more doctors, more equipment and more space and all of this came with its logistical challenges.
The moments that stood out were when we had a patient dying without their family being able to be there with them … Having to be their healthcare workers but their family at the same time as well, you really feel that level of humanity comes out at the time.
