At 8-years-old, Alicia Holland spent a month in the hospital, trying to mend a broken leg. She remembers the kindest people were the nurses who spent everyday with her, cheering her up and making her feel a little bit better.
“They were caring, they said hi to me in the morning and goodbye to me at night,” Holland said, now 49 and the manager of 64 nurses, technicians and other personnel at Longmont United Hospital. “It just seemed they were always there with the personal touch. They see people at their most vulnerable and they do their best to comfort them.”
“And let’s face it,” Holland said. “At 8, I was not the best patient.”
The experience led Holland into nursing, which wasn’t a huge stretch since her mom was a nurse. Holland is the manager of clinical nursing, the emergency department and cardiac catheter lab at LUH.
She not only oversees patients suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also those taking care of the patients.
“It’s tough on everyone,” Holland said. “Especially when the pandemic first hit. No one knew what to expect or how really to treat it. It’s the unknown of it all. How do you deal with the unknown?”
Nurses helped patients struggle as they held onto life, gripped by COVID-19, Holland said. “You are looking in a person’s eye and they can’t breath anymore. It shakes you up.”
“The best thing we can do is communicate, be present for them,” she said.
Holland also urged nurses and staff members to take time to help themselves, through therapy or at least call for a break in the day. “If they need to get away, take an hour, they need to do that,” Holland said.
Holland is one of four million RNs and LPNs in the United States whose work is celebrated during National Nurses week May 6-12. Nursing groups say this year was especially tough on the profession given the strains exerted by COVID-19.
Eight out of ten nurses responding to a Nursing Standard survey said their mental health had been affected by the pandemic, while six in ten said their physical health was suffering. The survey, conducted in November 2020, had 1,650 participants, according to the Nursing Standard.
“Long hours caring for patients, fears about contracting the virus, separation from loved one, and redeployment — the pressure on nurses has been unrelenting since March last year,” Nursing Standard states.
“And, of course, nursing staff has died,” the Standard states. “But nurses report for work in the most challenging of circumstances anyway, because that is the job.”
Holland said she never considered leaving the job, saying she gets support from other nurses and her family, most of whom are also in healthcare.
"I was never alone,” Holland said. “I always had somebody I could reach out to.”
