Local nurses have seen the faces of COVID-19 firsthand, and the toll it takes on patients and all frontline health care providers. Some local nurses wrote a letter to the community with a strong message about rising case numbers in our community.

“Wear a mask,” Jennifer Wilkinson, a nurse assistant at St. Mary’s says. “Make it your job.”

The letter states that COVID-19 is in our communities, touching all of us in one way or another. These nurses also addressed COVID fatigue and how we all have that but stress the importance of doubling down on these safety measures, especially with the holidays approaching.

The letter mentions the over 1,000 deaths and over 45,000 cases just in our 14-county region.

 

“People are coming onto the unit and they die within 24 hours,” Matthew Miller, a nurse at UPMC Hamot says. “That still gets to be difficult.”

He says right now they are seeing numbers they can’t keep up with.

“It plays on your mind a little bit,” Charmaine Rohan (RN), the Director of Cardiovascular Services at AHN St. Vincent says.

She says it’s important to take part in self-care and says her coworkers are always there for her and they always stick together.

“It’s something you get through,” she says. “We became nurses for a reason.”

They are all taking on more duties all while having to worry about their own families.

Nurses in the letter and health leaders all around us want us to know that we have to follow these safety measures.

“Stay home if you can, wear a mask,” Rohan says. “And take care of one another.”

“They are still finding out that exposure was keeping them safe just by all of us being mindful of wearing a mask, even in direct contact to patients who are spewing COVID-19 everywhere,” Miller says.

These nurses have to do their job everyday and do their job to the best of their ability despite all of the emotional stress they face.

“The hardest part was overcoming that fear and just going into the unknown,” Miller says.

He says if a vaccine comes out, “please get the vaccine. The worst thing that could happen is if people refuse to get the vaccine.”

He says majority of the patients he cares for with COVID-19 don’t know how or where they got the virus, and with that, stresses the importance of mask wearing because you never know who could have it.