Pandemic Parables: Magnet

Pandemic Parables: Magnet
Saturday July 25th 2020

This week there has been great excitement in the hospital in Frederick, Maryland where I am working as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August.

This was Magnet Week.

Let me explain.

Magnet Recognition is a huge honor awarded by the American Nurses Credentialing Center (AMCC) to hospitals committed to excellence. Indeed it’s the highest credential they give.

To even get on the radar of consideration a hospital has to have, among other things, a low turnover rate of dedicated effective nurses who love working in the hospital because they are nurtured and encouraged to advance in their careers. There has to be a healthy work environment, open communication, and excellent collaboration between different teams and specialties.

And of course there has to be absolutely fabulous nursing.

We have that in spades!

There are seventy two hospitals in the State of Maryland. Only seven have Magnet Status. Our hospital wants to be the eighth.

To be considered, there is a several years long process that includes sending in all sorts of reports Only a few hospitals get a coveted site visit, the precursor and last hurdle before achieving Magnet Status. Our hospital was offered a site appraisal earlier this year. This much anticipated event happened last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

The visiting appraisers couldn’t come in person because of Covid-19, so they arrived via a workstation on wheels known as a WOW.

(When I first started as an Intern last May, I heard that mobile workstations used to be called a Computer on Wheels - a COW. The nurses, and other medical staff, use them on each floor of the hospital. The name was changed after a notoriously grumpy elderly patient complained. Apparently a nurse had accidentally left one of these computers in the patient’s room. Someone else was looking for it. A nursing assistant came in to check on the patient, spied the lost machinery and came out into the hallway announcing “I’ve just seen the COW in room 3013.”

The patient heard.

Sparks flew.

The name was changed...)

(Another aside. There is no room 3013. I know because I spent ages looking for it one day. There are no rooms 13 on any of the hospitals' floors because many patients associate that number with bad luck...)

For this important visit “ambassadors” - specially selected nurses - were wheeling the WOW around. They were visiting every department within the hospital as well as Hospice and Oncology, which are in separate buildings. They met with the Medical Executive Committee who bragged about the brilliant nursing care at the hospital. They also met with members of the Community and Schools of Nursing who shared their positive experiences working as partners with us, and their experiences receiving care.

It seems as though the appraisers really liked what they saw including several examples of excellence they plan to recommend that senior leadership share at national conferences. And although we probably won’t know the results for a couple of months, by which time I will have left the hospital, all the signs point towards a positive outcome.

I am beyond thrilled.

Since I have arrived at the hospital I have been amazed at the dedication and compassion shown by the nurses. My admiration, which was already high, soared when COVID-19 became part of the equation. They deserved every one of the “hero” designations heaped on them by the community.

To me, getting the award would be a divine “Thank you!” to the nursing staff for continuously pouring out skill, love, and compassion on the sickest of patients, as well as all the others, during this fear-filled time.

One of my floors is the third floor. Before their allotted WOW visit on Tuesday afternoon excitement was running high among the nurses.

“I’m praying!” I told them all.

“Furiously!”

And indeed I did throughout the two hour on-line seminar that I had to attend while the WOW was being wheeled around.

As soon as my class ended I raced upstairs to find out how they fared.

The floor is divided into three sections.

3A was a dedicated Coronavirus isolation wing until the beginning of June.

“How did it go?” I asked one of the nurses.

She was bubbling.

“It was so good!” She said excitedly. “It was like looking into an iPad. You could see the faces of the assessors. We all thought that they’d talk to us separately but they gathered us all together. They were great. They were really interested in everything we had done as an isolation unit. We had a lovely time telling them about it all. In fact we ran out of time with lots more to say. In the end the assessors said that they would really like to come and work on 3A. And we said we’d really like to have them!”

I was beyond thrilled! The secretary and Nurse Manager also said how well it had gone.

Glory!

I trotted off to 3B, the section that now (with 4B) has the Coronavirus patients among their case load. (There is a small uptick in virus patients. At the end of the week we had seven confirmed patients, seven under investigation, and two hundred and twelve Covid-19 positive in-patient discharges. May those first two numbers shrink dramatically to zero and the last one grow. Soon! Oh Lord, Let it be!)

There was a gathering of male and female nurses in the charge nurses office.

“Tell me all,” I said. “How did it go!”

Words erupted from this group as though catapulting from a volcano.

“It went well!”

“They were great interviewers!”

“They asked the best questions “

“We had so much to say!”

“They seemed really nice!”

“And interested!”

“They said they wanted to come and work on 3B!”

I was laughing and exclaiming along with all of them and was ridiculously proud of each and every one of them.

There was a similar story on 3G. I talked to the charge nurse, who sounded like a mother hen who was delighted by her chicks, and herself. She glowed!

“It went really well.” She said. “Really, really well. The best thing is that I think those assessors saw who we are as a team. Really saw us and our work. It seems as though they loved what they saw. I couldn’t be more thrilled.”

Nor could I!

With every fiber of my being I want this hospital to be granted the Magnet award.

I have the greatest respect for these nurses, and for the ones in the Emergency Room, and Same Day Surgery - my other allotted areas. (Their interviews happened last Thursday and apparently they also went marvelously well.)

My admiration is rooted in the knowledge that I could not do what these dedicated professionals do.

Indeed I learned early in life that I was not created to be a nurse.

My first inkling of this was when I was around ten years of age. My Great Aunt Eileen lived with us. By this point in her life she was bed bound with severe rheumatoid arthritis. Her right leg was particularly painful and she kept it sticking out of the bed because even the weight of a sheet on it was too much for her to bear.

My great aunt was a character. I loved her with all her odd eccentricities.

She had lived in New York during the years after WWII but would make frequent trips back home to England. An England that was enduring severe rationing of basic goods for ten years after the armistice in 1945.

A few months before my mother’s wedding in 1953 my great aunt stepped off the ship in Liverpool and her awaiting family saw that she had put on a tremendous amount of weight around her middle.

As soon as she got home she shed that weight in a couple of minutes.

That’s when she unwound the yards and yards of expensive, beautiful, cream embossed silk that she had just smuggled into the country for my mother’s wedding dress.

My mother looks superb in the photos!

It was this same great aunt who, close to the end of her life, was in great pain and confined to bed. When she needed something she would bang on the floor of her room with her walking stick. My mother would then go up and see to her needs.

One morning my mother had already climbed the flight of stairs several times to attend to my great aunt (her aunt.)

“You go this time,” she said.

I trotted up the stairs.

“I want some more water,” said my aunt.

I went to refill her glass and placed it on her side table.

“Help me drink it!” ordered my aunt.

I scooped her up with one arm, turned to get her the water, then managed to drop her. She slumped back into her pillows with a thud.

My aunt was not pleased.

I tried again.

I propped my aunt up, turned to get the water, held it up to her lips and managed to dribble it down her chin. I made another attempt and this time some water splashed onto her chest.

This was too much for my feisty aunt.

“Get out! Get out!” She shouted. In my haste to put the glass down I slopped more water onto her.

“Get out!” My aunt shouted again.

I put the glass down and fled. But in my haste I tripped over her poor, painful, inflamed leg.

Her howls of anguish followed me down the stairs, and entered my psyche assuring me that nursing was not in my destiny.

Despite that knowledge I once, thirty years ago, looked after a famous, sometimes cranky, witty, elderly lady in Austin, Texas. She needed 24 hour nursing care, and was in the period before new health insurance kicked in. With subterfuge, persuasion, and the tiniest downright lie or two she persuaded me to come and look after her. I thought I was going to cook her meals and entertain her friends. I had no idea that bedpans would be involved.

Lots and lots of bedpans.

It was during that time that I developed a love for nurses, as well as an absolute knowing that this fine profession is a calling, and needs a divine anointing to be done well.

I rediscovered that I have neither of those things. But I recognize when other people do.

I see the calling and anointing on the nurses of all levels in our hospital.

Together with their bravery and dedication in the most trying, constantly changing, frightening, of seasons.

And that is why, I so passionately want them to get this Magnet Classification.

This divine thank you.

There are many times that the Good Book tells us that that the Lord sees what we do, and our reward is in His hand.

May that be true for all of us.

We might not have nursed others with great skill and compassion during a pandemic. But we have done what we are gifted to do.

Cook. Encourage. Write. Speak. Phone a friend. Tell stories. Knit socks.

Held on to hope in the midst of a world gone crazy.

I believe that the Lord will reward us.

He will give us the desires of our hearts.

He will change our circumstances.

We will fulfill our destinies, what we were created to do, in a way that would have been impossible without the tempering of this season.

A magnet draws iron particles towards it. We have shown courage, bravery and love during this Coronavirus season. We have let go of our accustomed way of life and gone without celebrations, hugs, and rationed our toilet paper.

We are wearing masks and socially distancing.

I believe that because of our sacrifices – these and others - we will draw towards ourselves, not iron filings, but answered prayers.

We will attract, will live in, a future where we walk in the fullness of all we were called to do. And are fulfilled and well provided for as we do so.

We will experience our own Divine Thank you.

So our future will be good.

May it be so.

Amen!