Interviews with a Therapist: Essential Workers & Mental Health
Our lead therapist Matt Yount explores topics of mental health in the healthcare field, as well as what the frontlines of the COVID crisis looks like, with our healthcare and nursing correspondence Tami Robertson. The excerpts below highlight these topics and many more. For the complete interview, click the button below. See the full transcript here
Matt: For those of you who may not know who My name is Matthew Yount I am a mental health therapist and a few different things that I do kind of help with the interviews for these blogs that we're putting out. Today I'm interviewing somebody that we find very interesting and has some really timely advice, not only for self-help and for understanding the stress that goes into essential working and Healthcare; but also to better understand the crisis that we're experiencing in our nation right now which is covid-19. so Tami I would like to learn a little bit more about you if we could can you help for the audience help us understand what it is that you do
Tami: I've been a nurse for 5 years and I've been working in primarily CV ICU but lately it has been COVID in since the start of this year pretty much
Matt: and what is it that a cv icu? what is that
Tami: cardiovascular ICU intensive care unit
Matt: I'll have to have a little bit more of an understanding so what did you do in the in the ICU unit that you worked in
Tami: try to let everybody go home. It’s the Sickest people of the sick.
Matt: okay so you work a lot in crisis situations okay so you've been doing crisis now with this type of crisis work for how long
Tami: I've been a nurse for 5 years and the COVID I’ve been doing this since about March whenever it kind of hit the Midwest
Matt: interesting part of you has to look at a person as if they are a piece of Machinery but you also have to remember there a person at the same time and treat them that way how do you keep that mindset
Tami: it’s not as hard as you think... I mean because it is a person lying there. one thing that we did during covid-19 that i think we should continue doing forever, everyone I dealt with was usually intubated, they can’t talk because they have a tube down their throat and our unconscious, hopefully, and what we did during COVID times and should become a standard, we invited family members to send pictures of their loved one in. And it humanizes them. People look different whenever they are sick you know and seeing somebody with their grandkids or at a birthday party or anything like that can really just help remind you of what you're fighting for.
Matt: sure yeah it's it's the humanization of the patient essentially is what you're doing because I can easily see how in some circumstances it could become very mechanical if you are just going in your checking vitals or checking my everything like all the medicines and then you're making sure okay I'm doing one supposed to do here next move on to the next person worth in my idea of a time keeping you alive so yes that's important but at the same time am I humanizing you while I'm doing that ; that changes the interaction between both the caregiver and the person who's receiving treatment and I would assume some ways to a very positive degree it changes that interaction
Tami: well I feel like it's partially A coping mechanism that we do to to kind of go on autopilot with patience whenever they're very sick because you're dealing with I'm I've had a lot of pumps a lot of medications running well sometimes are running real fast and if that if it stops for any second like that persons not going to be here anymore partially take yourself away from it looking at fax things in front of you and fixing small problems but remembering that that is a person and that we're trying to get them to go home back to their family and their loved ones it really does like it schedule a bit more inspiration to do though it makes it ...it’s hard too because whenever you do have that humanized like you get really I get really attached to people even if I've never heard their voice like you just are fighting so hard for them and you just want them to go back their families cuz you you find little things about them you know especially with those pictures like oh I went there with my mom and you know or you just... I try to treat everybody like how would want my mom to be or my brother.
Matt: so I think it would be a good time trying to better understand what it is that people what what's different in the medical field now and working with people that are having COVID and since the Covid outbreak versus what it used to be like I can't imagine like what the difference is so from your perspective what has changed since the beginning of 2020
Tami: I feel that one major factor this change for nurses is the PPE we want it we want it so bad there was a problem getting it at first but there is a factor that adds to the tiredness whenever you're having to wear an n95 plus a surgical mask plus essentially a trash bag and sweating and it's exhausting I have been a nurse for 5 years and I've had a couple times where I didn't really get to sit down the whole shift with covid-19 expected thing it was like you're going to be charting standing up in the room because if one of those drugs stop For any reason that persons not going to be there anymore so you have to be like you don't have a lunch breaks were hard a lot of people get dehydrated because it is nervous like that it makes you nervous and take your mask off even drink water if you want to be like away from everybody I mean it's the the fear behind it makes you a lot more exhausted because you're trying to take care of somebody and also make sure that you don't also get sick
Matt: one of the initial concerns was that you know if hospitals got flooded with patients and healthcare workers had to be there constantly that raises the ability for healthcare workers get sick are the chances of them getting sick or higher and if they get sick and they're out and then there's not people to replace them and it's a bad cycle that starts to form is that correct
Tami: and with COVID it's very easy especially if somebody is sick enough to be in the ICU chances are that they're sick enough that they're going to need it at some point to have CPR and that seems to be the most common time that people in healthcare have gotten Covid
Matt: The next thing that I kind of want to transition into is trying to understand who ends up in the ICU with covid-19 seems to be like you have to be really super sick a lot of pre-existing conditions really old in some way infirmed or feeble in order to end up and I see you shaking your head no
Tami: so it definitely does not help if you have comorbidities if you have other diseases that can cause problems diabetes is a good example because diabetes affect so many different organ systems already you think that it's just your pancreas but people have diabetes are more likely to end up on dialysis later in life because it does affect your kidneys they have more heart problems and usually end up needing some sort of like I mean long-term causes other Have something like that it can definitely make it worse but you can be absolutely healthy you can go run marathons you can you don't have no previous medical history whatsoever and die from covid
Matt: so you've seen this
Tami: I have seen as well and that's the stuff that I take home with me
Matt: so what is the average time people stay in
Tami: Alot of that depends on family or whoever is making the decision those are the situations that a lot of times the ethics committees will get involved in just to make sure that we aren't torturing people you know I mean it sounds kind of like that we don't want to be doing that but if we're not making it to where somebody could haven't even go to a nursing home cuz I mean these are the people that can't even go to a nursing home cuz they're onto many machines so that's usually when ethics is involved there usually younger people because nobody wants you know a 40 year old to you don't want it you don't want to give up on a forty-year-old because they should be able to snap yeah supposedly but unfortunately,COVID didn't get that memo well so those are the ones that people end up staying in the hospital for a really long time and those are the people that end up with a lot of complications assuming that they ever do get to go home
Matt: so it's it can vary wildly then for how long somebody is in the ICU it could be like maybe a week or so or somebody a hundred something days
Tami: I don't think I ever saw someone to go to the ICU I don't think that they ever left in a week
Matt: so what is typically the low end that you're in the ICU for something like this if my lease
Tami: There’s so many factors involved, best case scenario, they get they have the they got the the drug trial that works for them and that they get to go home I would say I would say three weeks minimum minimum if you have covid-19 or sick enough to go to the hospital like you're not asymptomatic and you have to be in the ICU level if you are cuz it's going to take two weeks for a virus to go through your body and just because of its not there anymore doesn't mean that the damage that it done just goes away your body still has to recover from that a lot of times people have like we have people that have to be on temporary dialysis which is a machine that works for kidneys because your kidneys will shut down kidneys are always first they just almost every multiple organ failure starts with kidneys huh cuz technically you can live for a little bit without your kidneys but it's harder to live without your lungs
Matt: It starts there and a system collapse begin to happen
Matt: that the primary means by which this virus tends to spread is through droplets
Tami: it is airborn... the droplets in the air but the it is very similar to the flu and how it is transmitted just because you know you can go and flu season you spray your door knobs and stuff like with lysol cuz you sure not to get the flu if you touch your eyes so if it gets in your eyes your nose or mouth it can attach and then you have it so we're in the mask is the best way to prevent it from spreading cuz even if you are asymptomatic you're not going to give it to somebody else
Matt: so what it what's going on there so you have seen another thing to wear like people will wear a mask and then like inhale a vaporizer don't blow it out and show all smoke coming out of the Mask like look so my understanding to that to you is that you're trying to keep these particles within a general area and not project them Ford is that one of the ideas to behind wearing a mask is that catch the sum of the droplets but if things get out they tend not to fly across somebody six feet away from you or whatever so they tend to stay in your area
Tami: consistency a sneeze droplets sneeze in the Sun and you see this will stop that have a whole bunch of stuff in your mask but generally speaking like I have seen people do with the The Vaping stuff but I did watch a video the other day that was really I think I did a very well-liked go to is good job and this man had a birthday candle birthday cake birthday and he tried on different masks somewhere homemade up to like n95 and showed that how hard it was in the mask to blow the candle out with now yeah yeah if you smoke in your mask which okay that just says a lot about somebody already but maybe you should stop smoke but that a lot of the homemade mask fit it depends I mean you're technically wearing a mask but that’s not doing a whole lot
Matt: the ones that look like fishnet stockings over their face
Tami: yeah I feel like people are really trying to just get away with not wearing one and they are feeling a loss of control over a lot in their lives right now don't have a lot to do with that they have to control something so they’re choosing to control essentially keeping us safe is what they’ve decided to control
