JOEL MASLEY
RESPIRATORY THERAPIST & Executive Board Member, UNIVERSITY CAMPUS, 3/31/20
Joel with SHARE Union Secretary Deb Clark and organizer Kirk Davis
Things are busy! In addition to taking care of patients, I’ve been helping get our department’s equipment ready for the surge. I’ve been working a lot with our new equipment tech, Michael. He’s awesome. It’s his second week, we’re really lucky we got him. We’re staging different parts, vent tubes, stuff to tie tubes, neb bags, stuff like that. And we’re working on standardizing all our carts in all the different locations where we’re setting up so that they can be used by everyone the same way. We did a video for critical care nurses to watch on vents, nebs, put a cleaning module together for our people. We redid a BiPap machine so it can work as a vent, and hooked up a vent that can work on two people at once. We put those downstairs so people can play around with them now and see how they work. We’re doing everything we can to get ready for whatever’s coming.
The last couple of weeks have been mentally and physically tiring, but the teamwork has really been exceptional between all the different roles, everyone is overlapping and helping each other. Everyone’s preparing for the worst case scenario, but really for the most part people are gelling together. And people are working hard to keep things cheery, too – for the most part people are being really good and generous with each other. I love the stuff coming in from outside, from people saying thank you. Like today Dunkin brought some stuff in for us, that was great. It feels like everyone’s pulling together to get the job done and take care of each other, you know?
EBS has been so good, they’re wiping everything down, doing such a thorough job. They are the real unsung heroes – they are an integral part of keeping us all safe and healthy. So there’s a whole team of people coming together to accomplish things, getting things done, that’s kind of neat.
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People are nervous about protective gear, about how many vents we’re going to do. They’re looking at New York, and waiting for the surge is hard – the next two weeks will be the telltale. But it’s not all doom and gloom, we’re really helping people. People think getting on a vent is a death sentence, but it’s not. One person just got extubated today. We’re seeing people get better now, so that’s a really good feeling, encouraging for what’s coming.
The reassigned staff seem like the ones who are most nervous right now, because they’re not sure what it will be like. We’ve got like 7 therapists coming up from the pulmonary lab. Or nurses from the clinics.
The most memorable moment for me from the last couple weeks was watching someone who was getting ruled out, and his wife couldn’t stay with him, she was extremely upset and wanted to be with him, that was tough, kind of an awakening for me. How would I feel in her position? That stuck out for me.