Even if you’ve done it before, working from home for an extended period of time comes with unique challenges. And many of us have been doing it for a while now thanks to COVID-19.
While Rush’s health care workers still head to our hospitals every day to treat patients and save lives, many other staff members — including most of our marketing and communications team — are working remotely.
So we’ve learned a few things along the way that are helping us maintain work efficiency and well-being — sometimes even our sanity — and we’ve decided to share them. Here goes:
This is an excerpt from a message Georgia Orchowski, RN, a nurse in the Emergency Department at Rush University Medical Center, recently shared with friends
First and most importantly, I cannot thank everyone enough for everything. I have been completely overwhelmed by the love and kindness I have been shown over the past few weeks. Every single gesture — a call, message, gift, coffee, meal, etc., is appreciated. I don’t feel worthy of any of it because nursing is something I have been doing for 12 years. It’s a part of who am. I would never think twice about being a part of the movement to care for America as more and more of us fall ill. It’s honestly an honor to know I can make a real difference in such a time of despair.
A couple thoughts as I reflect on what I’ve seen over the past few weeks for anyone reading.
No. 1 is please, please don’t panic. Fear gets you nowhere. We all know what we need to do to stop the spread — stay at home, wash your hands, etc. But your mental health is also so important. Stop reading so much COVID news. Take time for your mental health. Find something that brings you joy each day. Read for pleasure, meditate, exercise, have a glass of wine, watch Netflix. Get outside every single day. Stop reading so much COVID news! The world is not ending. This too shall pass.
Be kind to one another. It’s OK to still smile and wave when you pass people (six feet away) when you’re out walking the dog. Send a note in the mail to someone who might appreciate it. FaceTime friends or family members every day. Think about someone who might be lonely and reach out to them. Donate to a local food bank. If you’re reading this, you are probably in a lot better position than a lot of our country right now. So many have lost their jobs, are without paychecks, or have children home without food to eat. Let’s give what we can. Let’s take care of each other.
Do your part to not overwhelm our medical centers. Things are escalating quickly, and soon we will all be overrun with critically ill patients. Call your doctor if you think you have symptoms of coronavirus. If you think you do, honestly at this point you probably do. We have extremely limited testing supplies. They need to be saved for the elderly, immunocompromised, homeless and pregnant. If you have are having trouble breathing, come to the emergency room and we will help you immediately. If you have a fever, cough, sore throat or fatigue, you can probably help yourself at home.
Lastly, practice gratitude. Think about all that you have to be thankful for: a warm home, family, children, food to eat. Each day that I wake up and don’t feel sick I consider a gift. Each day that I get to work with the most incredible team of nurses and doctors, I feel beyond grateful. Thank you for reading, and take care of yourselves.
I know there’s a lot of fear right now with the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in the United States, and there’s even more fear when we start talking about shutting down schools and closing restaurants and taking a lot of measures to do social distancing.
But I think that should be our message of hope today. Social distancing actually works, and it is our best defense right now against this rising epidemic in our country.
Many people feel like we’re overreacting by closing schools and restaurants and not going to the movies, but actually it is our best hope for really making a change in the curve of acceleration of this illness in our country.
Braden Hexom, MD, is an emergency physician at Rush University Medical Center, which is preparing for a sharp increase in patients with COVID-19. He shared the following tips about the coronavirus.
Here are my recommendations for those of you wondering what you should do about COVID-19. I won’t go over the obvious — just my thoughts from a week on the inside. Hopefully there’s something useful in here:
None of you should want to come to get a coronavirus test. Simply standing in line puts you at risk. Especially if you are currently healthy and don’t need to be there. Getting a test shouldn’t change anything about how you prepare or act in the next few weeks.
Don’t come to the ER unless you are HAVING AN EMERGENCY. That means you are having difficulty breathing or you can’t keep down any food or water. If you have a cough, sore throat, or feel crummy, you already know what to do. You don’t need an ER for that. Call your doctor. Better yet, call your mom.
If you do have concerns or questions, do a video visit. Many large medical centers are doing these now. Your local public health office likely already has a hotline or process for fielding questions. Use them.
Stop buying toilet paper, hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes in bulk. Someone else needs those, and it’s probably not you. If you have a sink and soap, you have all you need.
Rethink your flu shot for next year. Chances are, if you have a cough, you may actually just have the flu, which is still widely present. You might have not had it altogether if you’d received your flu shot. And next year’s flu may be worse than this year’s coronavirus. We never know, that’s why we keep on working to make these better, every year. Whatever you are afraid of by not getting the flu shot is nothing compared to this.
Have honest, open discussionswith your children, family, older parents, etc. I’ve found that some of the best conversations I’ve had about the current pandemic have been with my kids. And we all need each other right now, especially when we’re asking everyone to shrink their community to the bare minimum. Make sure your kids are reassured. Check on your older relatives and make sure they have food.
Buckle up for a longer period of uncertainty than you are used to. I don’t know what next week will look like. It might be better. It might be worse. It will be like trying to buy the right stock right now. Just relax, slow your life down, enjoy the moments you are having with your loved ones or simply at home. Read a good book.
If you get seriously ill, we are here for you. But the only way I do my job at the top of my abilities is if you are truly sick. If I’m spending most of my day counseling you on why you don’t need a coronavirus test, then I’m not helping the ones who might be standing behind you in the screening line with an oxygen saturation of 79%.
When I began my tenure at Rush last year, I was proud to walk the halls of one of the finest health care institutions in the land. My mother worked in health care administration, and the care that she received prior to her death made me inspired to make the switch to this field.
I recall her writing down for me her life facts on a piece of paper before she passed. She was always thinking of others and knew that I, as her only child, would be planning her services. She spoke of being the first black baby born at Rush on July 12, 1953 (then Presbyterian Hospital). She was the youngest child of the late Claude and Geneva F. Brown.
Life is truly full circle. Here I am, 67 years later, now working at that very same place she began life.
Since it’s Black History Month, I am reflecting on how my ancestors and older relatives probably could not have dreamed of the position I am in now. Because of the strides that they and my mother made, it is conceivable for me to now shine. When I saw a slideshow of all the black excellence and history made here at Rush, I mentally inserted a slide about my mom.
A staunch champion for education, my mother, Linda Levon Brown, attended Emil G. Hirsch High School and graduated in 1971. She won a full academic scholarship to the University of Illinois at Chicago for education.
‘Destined for greatness’
Following college, Mom began her career in her chosen field of health administration at the University of Chicago Billings Hospital and the Osteopathic Chicago Hospital.
She was married in 1977 to decorated Purple Heart war veteran Robert L. Daniels, and to this union, her only child, Traci Daniels (me), was born in 1980. Priding herself in her work, my mom was employed throughout her career at South Chicago Hospital, University of Illinois Medical School, St. Francis Hospital and finally Palos Community Hospital.
Even her name, Linda, is a wonderful tribute to black history, as she’s named after the plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court Brown vs. the Board of Education case. It was almost as though her parents knew she was destined for greatness.
I like to think that her birth here at Rush was representative of all of the births that were to come — all of the great stories that have literally been birthed in Rush’s hallowed halls. If she had not ventured into the world of health, she would have loved a career in Silicon Valley or as a pilot. In fact, she made sure to attend the Bessie Coleman memorial here in Chicago every year, which celebrates the first black woman to get a pilot’s license. Mom also loved music (Motown artists were her favorite) and thoroughly enjoyed attending “Motown the Musical” for her last birthday before she passed.
When I think about Rush’s tagline and motto, “Excellence is just the beginning,” I feel that is truly the legacy my mother left through Rush, and with me. As I continue to craft my own legacy, I will definitely carry on that tradition in her honor.
Janet Wolter, MD, former physician and professor of medicine at Rush University Medical Center, died on Feb. 4. A national leader in cancer care, Wolter was a beloved researcher, mentor and friend.
Her career at what now is Rush University Medical Center began in 1963 and spanned almost 50 years. During her time here, she collaborated with endocrinologists to find new ways to treat cancer with chemotherapy and hormone therapy. She was especially interested in the treatment of breast cancer and in 1985 co-founded the Midwest’s first comprehensive breast center, today known as the Coleman Foundation Comprehensive Breast Cancer Clinic.
Wolter was passionate about care teams and encouraged nursing staff to work alongside physicians before this model of care was widely practiced.
Outside of her work as a third-year internal medicine resident at Rush University Medical Center, Erica Park, MD, loves to have “fun, random adventures.” Park recently had a particularly exciting adventure when she helped save a man’s life at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
On her way to interview for a gastroenterology fellowship, Park was searching for a place to charge her cellphone when she heard someone desperately call out for a doctor.
A man who had been experiencing chest pain earlier had become unresponsive while waiting with a friend at a gate for a flight. Park and two off-duty emergency medical technicians who were also waiting for flights went to work.
“I could not feel a carotid pulse, so we started compressions, and I asked for a defibrillator,” Park recalls. “We ended up doing three rounds of compressions and two shocks. Just as EMS arrived and began to do compressions, the gentleman regained consciousness, so they took him to the nearest hospital.”
Fresh from recently finishing her rotation in the cardiac ICU, Park said her training instantly kicked in.
“While we were resuscitating him, I just kept going through our BLS (Basic Life Support Training) and ACLS (Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support Training) steps we had learned while in residency,” she says. “It’s definitely different from a code in the hospital, since you don’t have all the supplies and medicine. I just kept telling myself to keep going with compressions and shocks, since that’s all we really had at the time.”
Helping people in need is nothing new for Park, who hails from Indiana. Inspired at a young age by her father, also a physician, she knew her calling would be in health care.
After the incident, Park went on her way, hoping for the best. Any hint of nervousness about her fellowship interview the next morning in California vanished with a phone call.
“I was really happy and relieved when I got the call the saying that he was doing OK in the hospital,” she says. “I was actually in my Lyft on the way to my interview when I received the call, so it was a good way start to my morning.”
One of the best parts of my job as a urogynecologist is the moment when a patient realizes that there are treatment options available for her. I have spent years training and focusing my attention on the pelvic floor — and it’s sometimes easy to forget that these issues aren’t getting the publicity they deserve.
Although these issues are getting more attention in mainstream media outlets, like the New York Times, BBC News and Cosmopolitan magazine, we still have work to do to get the message out to women: While common, these are not conditions they need to suffer with silently.
Pelvic floor disorders include pelvic organ prolapse (where the bladder, bowel and uterus can fall downward out of the vagina), urinary incontinence, accidental bowel leakage (sometimes called fecal incontinence), and difficult or painful intercourse.
These issues can affect women of any age, but they become more common with age and after childbirth. Because these can be very personal or embarrassing issues, women don’t always feel comfortable speaking about them openly — even to their doctors. That doesn’t mean, however, that they don’t have a major impact on women’s quality of life.
Even if you’ve done it before, working from home for an extended period of time comes with unique challenges. And many of us have been doing it for a while now thanks to COVID-19.
Braden Hexom, MD
Janet Wolter, MD, former physician and professor of medicine at Rush University Medical Center, died on Feb. 4. A national leader in cancer care, Wolter was a beloved researcher, mentor and friend.
By Anne Sammarco, MD, MPH