Rising to the moment: Rochester nurses reflect on their experiences from inside Mayo's Covid unit

Britta Balko, a nurse at Mayo Clinic Hospital — St. Marys Campus, can remember the first time she walked into a room of a patient who had contracted Covid-19. It was a little more than a year ago, as the country was beginning to feel the impacts of a novel coronavirus sweeping the globe.

“It was very nerve-racking after hearing everything on the news,” recalls Balko. “You didn’t really know what you were going into. Everyone was learning. It was new for everybody.”

Balko, like the rest of her colleagues in Mayo’s Covid unit, never signed up to be one the front lines of the worst pandemic in a century. Rather, they were selected based on their past experience in pulmonary medicine.

Still, not even a specialty in treating lungs — the first organ to be affected by Covid — could have prepared the unit for those early weeks of the pandemic. With our understanding of the virus still evolving, and without the types of therapies that would emerge later, there was a feeling that “we weren’t able to do as much as we thought we could have,” explains Paul Convery, a nurse who works alongside Balko in the Covid unit.

“If someone came in with a more well-known disease, we know what to do; we have X, Y, Z,” says Convery. “But with this, we felt stuck without any tools at the time to provide the level of care we expect from ourselves.”

Meanwhile, from state to state, the pressure to slow the spread of the virus began to intensify. Schools were closed. Workers were told to stay home. Soon after reaching our shores, the virus had forced the nation into lockdown — that is, unless you were a medical professional.

“I will always remember driving to work,” recalls Stephanie Olson, also a nurse in Mayo’s Covid unit. “Highway 52 is usually so busy in the morning, but all of the cars at 6:30 in the morning would just be going off to the hospital. There would be no other cars going north or south. So, that was powerful, because it was like ‘the world is shut down, and here I am going to work … because that’s what we do.’”

But even as the public began to grow more anxious about the outbreak, Convery says the real pressure came from within. After all, there was no standard other than the standard they set for themselves, he says.

Rising to this unprecedented challenge would mean being resourceful, adapting to changing situations on the ground, and coming together as a team — all skills that are central to the field of nursing.

“Really, we were just presented with this new and kind of frightening challenge, but all the building blocks were there,” says Convery. “Being at Mayo obviously helps. You have all these resources. It was just putting the pieces together as a team and figuring out how to approach the challenge.”

Filling a void

Among the challenges the staff in the unit would confront is the sense of isolation felt by Covid-positive patients. Because the virus can spread easily through the air, strict precautions were taken to limit visitor access.

This often left nurses and other health care workers — donned head-to-toe in PPE — as the only source of in-person interaction for patients.

“People long for personal interaction,” says Convery. “Being that health care workers are the only ones who can come visit you while you’re in isolation, I think we filled a large void in just general day-to-day interactions.”

Convery notes that technology also played a big role in allowing patients to stay connected with family and friends virtually. Ten years ago, he says, going through the same event would have been much more difficult.

“[Back then] you didn’t have Zoom. You didn’t have all these opportunities to talk with someone or visually see them,” he says.

Fighting the virus, and misinformation

Technology, however, proved to be a double-edged sword. The same devices used to connect patients with loved ones were causing headaches for health care workers, as misinformation about the virus began to circulate online.

Working the nursing call line, Balko says she had her share of challenging conversations while trying to present callers with the most up-to-date science about the virus, how it spreads, and the impact it can have.

Some of the conversations, she says, were especially difficult given that she and her colleagues were seeing first-hand how menacing Covid could be.

“It was really hard seeing what was in the news and hearing people think it’s not real or thinking it’s not that bad, and then coming to work and seeing that it is bad. It can be really bad,” says Balko. “That is what I struggled with the most.”

Convery believes the disconnect between what was happening in the hospital and how the public was responding was driven by the detachment people had with the consequences of their actions.

In many cases, he says, an infected individual may not know the person three links away from them who winds up having a severe reaction.

“How can we develop compassion in other people when they don’t see the consequences?” shares Convery.

Superlatives not necessary

But even as they lamented parts of the public response to the pandemic, the nurses inside the Covid unit say they were just as grateful to those who stepped up to provide support.

People sent cards. They delivered food. Many in the community even began referring to nurses as “superheroes” — a term Olson says she was flattered by, though not entirely comfortable with.

“The ‘superhero’ title that people gave nurses through this — we are proud of that, but this is something we were doing before the pandemic,” she says.

With the vaccine rollout beginning to signal the end of this pandemic, Olson, Balko and Convery say they know their work is not done. Influenza and other virus outbreaks will continue to pose challenges in the future.

Because of the many innovations that came about because of this pandemic, though, the nurses believe they will be more prepared than ever before — offering care and support to whoever may need it.

“No matter your status, no matter how literate you are, what language you speak,” emphasizes Balko, “nurses will always be there for you.”

Sean Baker is a Rochester journalist and the founder of Med City Beat.

Cover photo (from left to right): Balko, Convery and Olson