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. Continue reading
Henry V 4.3 