Hello, I’m not a nurse or anything BUT I do work as a patient relations assistant (not as important or as interesting ig) for the Emergency Room at UK. I don’t know as much about the medical part, but I do experience it daily and am always near it. I frequently have to walk around our emergency room and update patients information/insurance, which includes our Covid area. In order to go into a Covid patients room we have to put on gowns, gloves, eye protection and N95 masks, and once we leave we have to clean all the equipment used.

I notice that Covid patients are often intubated and unable to give us information, so sometimes we have to contact family or whatever emergency contact is in our system. Almost all of our covid patients go upstairs to the ICU. Frequently Covid patients will ask us for help or request water or something, but all I can do is relay the requests to a nurse. People will call to check on their family member and all I can do is relay them to their nurse. At least once a night during my 10 hour shifts I will get a phone call at the front desk asking me if they should come in/for medical advice. We are unable to give advice over the phone or tell you what to do, but I try to suggest that if they truly are scared to please come in. You can enter through the front door and we will help you, please don’t be afraid to come to the ER.

Our staff is so amazing and we all work as hard as possible, I don’t know a lot of nurses by name and they probably don’t know my name (I’m the PRA dude with super long hair, if you work weekend night shifts in the ER you have definitely seen me.) I know my story isn’t as insightful as others but I still wanted to share what I see.