CHICAGO — Shawndra Ferrell had a particularly tough day as a palliative care nurse practitioner at Advocate Trinity Hospital in the Calumet Heights neighborhood.
A patient needed hospice care, but the family was having a difficult time with the decision. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, Ferrell, whose job centers on improving the quality of life of patients with chronic or severe illnesses, went back and forth between phone conversations and video calls from the patient’s bedside to talk them through it.
Video calls in such situations have become the norm during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they often are helpful. But there are times when it only makes it more difficult for family members who want to be in person at the hospital.
“It’s so much harder for them, and sometimes your heart just breaks,” Ferrell said. “It’s just hard. Sometimes you’re just very grateful for the days you’re the nurse and not the patient, but on the other hand, you’re just like, on any given day, this could be any one of us.”
Before Ferrell wrapped up the day, she was asked to get on a video call, with the only detail being that she would be recognized for her work over the last year during the pandemic. When she got on the call, she found the president of her hospital and former Chicago Bears cornerback Charles “Peanut” Tillman waiting to speak with her.
Ferrell was one of four Advocate health care workers selected to receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Super Bowl LV this weekend, provided by the Bears and the NFL.
Ferrell, Drs. Alicja and Jacob Salman, married hospitalists at Advocate Christ Medical Center, Sherman Hospital and South Suburban Hospital, and Carl Paige, a facility operations worker at Trinity, are some of the 7,500 vaccinated health care workers from NFL markets that will attend the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., on Sunday.
The NFL is providing game tickets, pregame concert tickets and transportation to and from the stadium, and the Bears are providing airfare, hotel accommodations, ground transportation, food and drinks and Bears and Advocate “swag” for the four employees Advocate Aurora Health selected.
“I remember staring at the screen, like, what is happening?” Ferrell said. “Just utter shock and amazement. There is zero way you can prepare for a moment when somebody says, ‘You are going to the Super Bowl.’ Your mind just zones out for a second. The whole rest of the time he was talking, the only thing I could say was, ‘Wow. Wow.’ I’m usually a very talkative person, and all I could get out was, ‘Wow.’
“It was an amazing thing. It was the best thing that could have happened at the end of a very, very hard day.”
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The NFL announced the initiative last month to include vaccinated health care workers among 25,000 fans at Sunday’s game as a way to thank them for their service during the pandemic and to promote vaccination.
“For all of the health care workers around the country, honestly, everybody deserves this experience we’re getting,” Alicja Salman said. “And it just kind of sheds some light that you know what, you guys are appreciated for what you’re doing, and that goes for everybody, because everybody has gone through this together over the last year.”
The pandemic has affected the four Advocate workers in varying ways.
Jacob Salman, whose job as a hospitalist involves managing patients that come into hospitals, won’t soon forget the X-ray he saw last February.
“I was looking and was like, ‘Wow, what kind of X-ray is this? I’ve never seen pneumonia like this so fast,’ ” he said. “And then COVID happened.”
The virus soon began to spread in the Chicago area, and Jacob and Alicja, who are 34 and 32 and originally from Chicago and suburban Detroit, volunteered to be on the COVID-19 units at the start. They since have treated more than 1,000 COVID-19 patients between them at various hospitals, according to Advocate.
“There was a lot of fear around it, but we were both young and healthy, so we volunteered and we were on the front lines for that from the beginning,” Alicja said. “We were happy to do so, especially since some of the physicians are older, so we just went ahead and did it.
“We’re there to treat acute patients, so when the COVID patients were coming in, it didn’t really strike us as anything different. It’s just like, you know what, we’re here, this is our job, this is what we’re supposed to do.”
The pair talked about treating COVID-19 as “a work in progress” as they learned more about the virus and its effects. They witnessed exhaustion and burnout from colleagues but said they received strong support from their team and leaders. They also draw comfort from the times they get to work together.
They first met while working on publishing a project together, did their residency at Wayne State in Detroit together and were married in 2018.
“Despite how long the day is, in the middle of the day, you can eat lunch together or stay later to help others because you don’t need to leave to go see someone,” Jacob said.
“Honestly, when we work together, it doesn’t feel like we’re working,” Alicja said. “It’s really nice that we’re in the same place at the same time.”
Paige has worked as a maintenance mechanic at Advocate for more than 15 years and was celebrated for going “the extra mile to cover for quarantined co-workers and help maintain a clean environment,” according to Advocate.
Ferrell, 47, who was born in Englewood and now lives in South Holland, has faced her own challenges during the pandemic.
Trinity serves some of the hardest-hit South Side communities, and one of Ferrell’s tasks is communicating options to patients and families, some of whom don’t trust medical professionals or have low health literacy. The nurse of 23 1/2 years has had to learn how to demonstrate compassion to families via video and to patients without being able to offer them human touch.
“We forget how therapeutic it can be to just have somebody touch your hand, touch your arm, touch your head, sit very close to your bed,” Ferrell said. “When we walk in the hospital, we’re wearing gloves almost at all times now. So if you think about it, some patients have not had skin-to-skin touch since the day they entered the hospital because the premise of safety first is so tantamount.
“So for patients in isolation or family meetings where we’re not doing video, I started to consider possibilities. If they can’t see my face or read my body language, maybe they can’t tell that I care. Personally, I had to do a lot of work to change the tone, tenor and cadence of my voice. I slowed down a lot. I talked a lot more. I gave a lot more room to let a person just kind of sit with what I said. And sometimes that meant calling back in a day or two or visiting in a day or two.”
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Joy hasn’t always been easy to come by during the pandemic, Ferrell said. She found it difficult to celebrate finishing her doctorate in nursing from Loyola in July because of what her patients were going through. She hasn’t seen her grandmother in 10 months to keep her safe.
So Ferrell expects the experience this weekend with her three Advocate co-workers to be “nothing short of awesome.” She supports all Chicago teams, though her husband advised cheering for the Chiefs on Sunday.
“Even with less people in the stands and the distancing that has to occur in the stands, I just think the air, the atmosphere, no matter who you came to cheer for, everybody will have come there looking for the excitement that comes with being with other people,” she said. “I am just over the moon. I cannot wait to see so many people in one place. Safely — but in one place.”
The Salmans and Ferrell expressed hope the NFL could safely pull off the event after five months of developing precautions.
Fans will be given KN95 masks they must wear at all times, the NFL announced Wednesday. Social distancing will be enforced. Hand sanitizing stations will be available, and ticketing and purchases will be touchless.
Jacob Salman said it’s important for an influential entity such as the NFL to promote continued COVID-19 precautions and vaccination by hosting health care workers.
The Salmans received the vaccine the first day it was available to them.
“It was a huge relief, and just a light at the end of the tunnel that this is our solution right now,” Jacob Salman said. “And we’re lucky that it came so fast. I mean, it was a long year, but in the sense of a vaccine, it was fast.”
Ferrell made up her mind early that she would get the vaccine as soon as it was available to her. But she originally didn’t tell anyone except for the people in her home she was getting it because of the many people she knew who were uncertain about vaccination or had strong opinions about it.
“When I entered the room, everybody was excited to be there, like the air in that room was completely different,” Ferrell said. “It was only after being in that room, with all of these like-minded people, that I realized, I don’t want to hide this decision. I’m not making it because I’m embarrassed or I’m uninformed or forced. I made this decision, and I’m proud to have done it, so when I posted about it, I said, ‘I’m doing this to protect myself, my family, and I’m protecting your loved ones that are in my care.’ ”
Now Ferrell is happy to be a part of the message Sunday during the Super Bowl that the vaccine — while not a fix-all — is going to make life safer for everyone.
“With millions of people watching, they’re using their powerful voices to put forth this really amazing message,” she said.
And the 7,500 health care workers get to have some much-deserved fun while spreading that message.
