Lauren
As 2020 was deemed "The Year of the Nurse," it's only appropriate for us to highlight some of the amazing nurses that made us so proud to be part of such a noble and respected profession in the past year. Here are 5 amazing nurses that we are so happy to support!
Amy O'Sullivan, RN is an emergency room nurse at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in New York City. An 18-year veteran, she treated the hospital's first COVID-19 patient, becoming the city's first person to die of the disease in March 2020. Ms. O'Sullivan also displayed coronavirus symptoms, was intubated and spent four days on a ventilator. She returned to work two weeks after leaving the hospital. She displayed true heroism risking her life to save others when so little was known about the disease.
Bonnie Castillo, RN, is the executive director of National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has fought layoffs and pay cuts for nurses and was among the first to highlight the lack of personal protective equipment for nurses. Ms. Castillo has an unwavering commitment to the labor movements and unions and continues to fight for societal rights for nurses.
Nurse Blake is a prominent RN-turned-content creator, who uploads hilarious posts on Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube that has provided desperately needed comedic relief during such a challenging year. Nursing can be a serious and exhausting job, but being able to laugh at ourselves is so important! Nurse Blake has also created the Banned4Life campaign, which began after he was turned away from donating blood for his friend with sickle cell anemia because of his sexual orientation. This campaign advocates for changing the FDA's outdated policy using his significant platform. Plus, he invented the "scromper" - scrubs made into a romper.
Ellen Smithline, PhD (c), MS, RN, CEN, is a remarkable nurse from Springfield, MA who designed a low-cost protective face shield with a team of professionals at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in less than two weeks. This face shield can be mass produced to provide protection to frontline health workers. Ellen played a critical role by providing her nurse insights into the final design, coming from 35 years of experience that includes Ebola, SARS, and emergency care. She recently paused her PhD program to join the frontlines as an isolation tents nurse manager for communities hit with COVID-19 and embodies the unmistakable passion for the nursing profession.
Jessica Latham, RN, is a critical care nurse educator in Birmingham, Alabama. When working on the COVID-19 ICU, she realized her team's usually method of communication during code blue incidents needed to be amended during the pandemic. Latham stated the importance of finding a way to "help keep the code team informed and those outside the room unexposed." With the help of other nurses and managers on her unit, the installment of glass doors on patient rooms, and a lamination machine, Latham created "Code Cards" within an hour of thinking of the idea. These cards help communicate messages to the nurses within the room quickly and effectively, a practice that can be utilized for future patients and even beyond COVID-19.
These nurses make us SO proud of what we do, especially in the past year. Thank you to all of the people listed above and all of those who are a part of the profession. We appreciate you so much!
Comments