Coping with Essential Work

Nia Abuzid is an aspiring occupational therapist getting her undergraduate degree in psychology. She has worked at Holy Name Medical Center for the past 4 years as a Patient Access Representative, a Bed Census Coordinator, and a Physical Therapy Aide. She has always known she had a future in health care, but that belief was put to the test during the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic hit, most non-essential hospital positions were repurposed. From building different COVID units to stocking supplies on them, she found herself working on different projects. During this time, she was also a full-time student and was even able to move out of her parents’ house. She also became the proud mother of a kitten named Nugget. 

Nia’s adopted cat, Nugget

One of the first things that Nia emphasized about her life during the pandemic is that her mental health was severely impacted by the trauma of death. An outsider would assume that dealing with death is a typical responsibility of a healthcare worker; however, death in the quantity COVID brought caused tremendous changes to occur in the hospital. Nia was furloughed at the beginning of the pandemic and then brought back to conduct different duties within the hospital without receiving prior training. Her employer required the staff to come into work regardless of their personal situations. At one point, Nia was a full-time student while clocking more than 40 hours per week at the hospital with no days off. She told me that her supervisor also required staff who tested positive for COVID to continue working in order to maintain their job.

Nia shares about her suicidal thoughts

She moved out of her family home and moved in with her boyfriend, which gave her a sense of relief from worrying whether she would contaminate her family. Even so, she now feared infecting her boyfriend and Nugget. Nia is very meticulous about her uniform and leaving the house. She wears several layers of clothing and protective accessories to avoid contamination in her new apartment. She started appreciating the small things in life, and her relationship with her family strengthened after moving out. She constantly told her parents that she loved them because she feared that she might never get the chance to say it again.

One day, as she was clearing out a conference room at the hospital to make into a COVID unit, she heard a code blue, but the sound that signaled another patient in distress had become mere background noise by that point. She told me she didn’t learn until later that she had just lost a close work friend at that moment. 

Losing a coworker

Using drugs to cope with pandemic stress

Reacting to the trucks that stored the bodies of COVID victims

She told me that many nurses were using drugs during the pandemic to help alleviate their stress and anxiety on the job, and that she smoked marijuana for the same reason. She also slept whenever she could to forget the nightmares that she witnessed during her waking hours. The sight of the trucks that picked up the corpses of COVID victims shook her deeply. After hearing this, I was also haunted by the image of human bodies being treated like cargo.

Now, Nia has returned to her pre-pandemic job and is no longer working with COVID patients.