A PICU nurse said that to me recently. We had just finished doffing and were walking out of the hot zone transition area of the Convention Center COVID field hospital where we worked. We struck up a conversation and at the end of our exchange I thanked her for serving these patients with us. “Of course!” was her reply.
I think I have heard that response more often these days. Perhaps it is cultural or generational (millennial?). Or maybe it’s just a new colloquialism characteristic of the times. I can’t recall whether it was as common before COVID as it seems to be now. But maybe I should just blame that on “COVID time.” (It seems I can’t remember a lot of things from before COVID.)
In the case of this nurse the “Of course!” took on special meaning. We talked about our shared experience working in pediatric intensive care and the special calling it takes to be a nurse in that setting. She told me that she loved taking care of critically ill children, but when this contingency COVID hospital was established she wanted to be a part of it. The unit where she worked couldn’t allow her go to part-time, so she resigned. And she has been a part of caring for the more than 1,300 adults with COVID we have admitted in our past year or so of operation.
She left something she loved to be part of something she felt needed to be done.
In his mid-twentieth science fiction novel “Starship Troopers” (Putnam 1959), Robert Heinlein wrote “Duty is the social equivalent of self-interest.” It is “the basis of all morality.” It strikes me that duty was not something we heard as much about before the pandemic. Attention and devotion to duty seem to be common virtues now.
In my mind her reply “Of course” reflected this sense of duty. Just as she acknowledged my suggestion that caring for critically ill children was a gift, she also was willing to temporarily lay aside the gift to respond to an emergency that has asked health care professionals to step up in ways they have never had to before, at least in my lifetime. I sensed the same perspective in the young women and men I met in the combat zone a decade or so ago; people who felt the desire to be part of something bigger than themselves, something they believed in.
The field hospital team has been an easy group to lead. They are dedicated, committed, patient-focused professionals from a range of backgrounds all singularly dedicated to these patients and relieved that with the vaccine, we can begin to believe that an end is in sight.
Eventually this field hospital will close. The work of caring for COVID patients, providing ambulatory monoclonal and polyclonal antibody infusions, conducting ongoing, mass COVID testing and vaccinations will be returned to an American health care system and government that hopefully has a better appreciation for the importance of public health and pandemic preparedness.
My colleague will likely return to her professional passion and in the years ahead she will almost certainly successfully complete the advanced degrees and training she mentioned when we spoke. Someday people will ask her about her experience during COVID and she will refer back to this work. I have a suspicion when they express their appreciation she will answer them the same way she answered me: “Of course!”
She will speak for a generation of health care professionals who when asked, stepped forward and embraced duty. And with that embrace, they have wrapped themselves around our collective self-interest.
Chuck Callahan Henry V 4.3 – Lead from the Front https://henryv43.com/
Henry V 4.3 