By EMMA BAGATELLE

Introduction

On January 20, 2020, the CDC confirmed the first positive covid-19 case in the United States. Two months later, the entire country was on lockdown, and covid-19 was labeled a global pandemic. Due to the rapid spread of covid-19, hospitals and employees inside the hospitals had to quickly adjust to this new normal. Nurses and doctors were working and living inside the hospital and all wings of hospitals were transformed into rooms to take care of patients that were sick with covid.

Priscilla Sterne has worked as a nurse in different departments at Greenwich Hospital for over 20 years. Having been a nurse for such a long time, she has seen many different things happen inside the hospital over the years. Priscilla is director of nursing operations at Greenwich Hospital and witnessed the hardships that everyone dealt with during the pandemic.  

Interview with Priscilla Sterne

EB: Okay, tell us a little about yourself. What is your name, where are you from, how old are you and what is your occupation?

PS: Hi, I’m Priscilla Sterne, I’m 58 years old, I’m from Edgewater, New Jersey, I’m a registered nurse, my current position is director of nursing operations at Greenwich Hospital.

EB: How do you normally retrieve your news in general?

PS: So, I would say that I receive information from nursing publications so Journal of American Nurse also Becker’s Institute sends out emails, weekly emails about the healthcare industry especially hospitals which is an organization that I work in and that I have a leadership role in so it’s important for me to keep up on current information. Also, I work for Yale New Haven Health System which comprises of 4 different organizations, 4 independent hospitals or we call them delivery networks and so Yale New Haven Health system frequently does town halls where they talk about what’s happening what’s happening in the health care industry and how it affects our health care system

EB: In 2020, covid-19 was labeled a global pandemic. How did you feel when it became a global pandemic and how did it feel working at the hospital at this time?

PS: So, we were pretty much ground zero for the Northeast because the first patient that was diagnosed with covid-19 came from Westchester and he actually came to Greenwich Hospital to the emergency department and then was transferred to New York City so in the beginning we didn’t really know what was happening, but we quickly put our disaster management – we went to a code D – which is disaster management. What that is, is that we have leadership that meets every morning and then throughout the day when necessary, so we put into place infection prevention, we made sure we had enough staff and so we went into that mode pretty quickly.

EB: And from then to now, how does it currently feel now after the height of covid-19, like working in the hospital and all the people and the employees?

PS: So, we went through 4 waves and the most recent wave was probably November, December, January. I feel like now since there’s been other strains of covid-19 I feel like we’re much better equipped to handle when something happens that kind of upsets the usual organization. People know what their role is, and they just know what they need to do. So, we’re more comfortable with anything that comes up or happens that we need to make adjustments to. 

Related Stories:

What’s It Really Like to Be a Nurse During a Pandemic?

“Nursing, as a profession, received heightened attention during the covid pandemic. Nurses are hailed as heroes, employed in dangerous front-line work, battling exhaustion and burnout. In reality, the experiences of individual nurses vary by type of position, geographic location, and career experience.”

14 nurses on life and work during COVID

“If a line graph of hospital admissions over the past 20 months looks like a series of peaks and valleys, the initial surge was Mount Everest for the state’s medical facilities, with patient loads and death rates that have not been matched since.”