Elderly parents and grandparents are among those who are at high risk to get the deadly Coronavirus. And as more and more elderly are acquiring Covid-19, more and more nursing homes and other similar facilities grapple with the overwhelming number of in-house patients.
In a news story by USA Today, one nurse in Austin narrates her everyday life in one of Austin’s busiest nursing homes.
Maria Ortega cradled a phone to her ear – her children and grandchildren huddled around her – as she choked out a few final words to her mother, Rachel Luna, 74.
Luna was in an ICU bed across town, in and out of consciousness, dying from the coronavirus. She slipped away just after midnight on April 15.
The next day, Barbara Gardner, 86, who lived down the hall from Luna at the West Oaks Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Austin, Texas, succumbed to the virus alone in her room.
On the third consecutive day of heartbreak at the tan-brick facility, Maurice Dotson, 51, a beloved nursing assistant who tended to patients there for a quarter-century, became the first health care worker in the city to die from COVID-19.
“My heart breaks for everyone there,” Dotson’s mother, Florence, said. “I pray about it every day.”
Since the outbreak began in late March, the virus has stalked the West Oaks hallways, spreading from room to room, patient to patient. West Oaks has averaged at least two deaths a week. More than half of its 125 patients have been diagnosed with the virus. Fifteen have died. Two dozen staff members have tested positive.
Read the full news here.
Notwithstanding the new norm created by this pandemic, it is not a hidden secret that the nursing community is also facing some long-understood truths, that is nurses are underpaid, undervalued, and sometimes treated as expendable. But this doesn’t remove the nurse’s will to help treat their patients the best they can.
However, because of the exhaustion, this pandemic is giving to the nursing community, some nurses may accidentally fail to do their work nicely. Because of this, they may face a disciplinary hearing by the Texas Board of Nursing.
If you are a Nurse in Austin who is currently facing any disciplinary issues before the Texas Board of Nursing, please contact Austin nurse attorney Yong J. An, call or text at 832 428 5679 or anlawfirm@gmail.com. Mr. An has represented over 100 nurses before the Texas Board of Nursing since 2006.