4 Spirit Summer 2020 Edition
ON THE FRONT LINES
from Lincoln County — had died at their hospital. None of those from farther east died. And no GPH member got the virus. “I think the reality matched our expectations and the anticipation of that surge in the (patient) volume,” Jacobson said. “But I think we were well-prepared for that.” Gochenour was part of the medical team that treated 92-year-old Frank Naranjo of North Platte, who became Lincoln County’s first COVID-19 fatality on March 31. “Watching that process was hard. Despite our best efforts, our hands were tied,” he said days later. “And that was very difficult.” Gochenour also worked with the other GPH patient to succumb to the virus, a woman in her 60s whom he said had been hospitalized with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and then contracted COVID-19. Her name has not been released. A far happier day for Gochenour — and for GPH’s staff in general — came on May 5, when one of the Dawson County patients, 56-year-old Oscar Orellana, was released after 13 days to run a gauntlet of cheering health care workers. “That was very rewarding when that guy left,” Gochenour said. “He didn’t speak a whole lot of English. But we knew what he was saying.” As “directed health measures” took hold in Lincoln County in late March and early April, Gochenour and Jacobson were learning something like what astronauts go through. Both were familiar with “personal protective equipment,” especially Jacobson, a 22-year GPH veteran. She worked in GPH’s intensive care and medical-surgical units before joining the ER group in 2010 — a step that also led to eight years as a life-flight nurse. “We’re used to using the personal protective equipment every day,” she said in April. “This has enhanced that a great deal.” But from March 17 to early May, when she was reassigned to more normal emergency room work, Jacobson wore the heavy-duty gear at least four hours a day testing patients in cars for COVID-19. Her plastic PPE suit covered her “from chin to toes,” she said in April. She wore two pairs of gloves, both of which had to be sanitized between patients and at shift’s end. Topping it all off was a powered air purifying respirator hood, a “positive-pressure” device that ensured she was breathing clean air. Wendy Ward, the hospital’s risk manager, and GPH patient advocate Cari Meyer helped set up the daily testing schedule. With winter only just ending, Jacobson sat in the North Platte Fire Department’s hazardous materials truck between patients. Continued on page 6
BY TODD VON KAMPEN todd.vonkampen@nptelegraph.com
As COVID-19 shut down America, Stephanie Jacobson, Andy Gochenour and their Great Plains Health colleagues hoped for one gift. Time. They had seen the videos from New York City, Italy and around the world where coronavirus patients clogged hospital halls, doctors and nurses despaired of keeping up and patients and their caregivers alike got sick and died. They couldn’t know what would happen when the novel coronavirus arrived in North Platte and west central Nebraska. They just hoped to be ready. Gochenour, 44, and Jacobson, 53, were early arrivals on the front lines. As registered nurse coordinator for GPH’s emergency department, Jacobson spent several weeks starting on St. Patrick’s Day taking nasal swabs from possible COVID-19 patients in the hospital’s drive-through test line. Gochenour, GPH’s respiratory therapy supervisor, and his 14 staff therapists did their best to relieve the suffering of the hospital’s suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients in an isolated area in the hospital’s main tower. The Telegraph first interviewed Jacobson and Gochenour just before Easter, after the hospital admitted its first coronavirus patients and experienced its first COVID-19 death. They were bracing for the worst. “It’s definitely an unknown,” Jacobson said. “I have a great support system at work and home, so I’m very lucky that way.” “We’re steeling ourselves to get ready for the influx of patients that is coming,” added Gochenour, who joined GPH in 2014 after working at CHI Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney. It did, just a couple of days later. Neither knew during their first interviews that GPH that weekend would admit 10 confirmed COVID-19 patients from a nursing home in Callaway in Custer County. Six more followed two weeks later from Dawson County, where the coronavirus was racing through Lexington’s Tyson meatpacking plant. Looking back in early June, Gochenour and Jacobson spoke of high-pressure shifts, isolation between shifts, trying treatments and watching patients struggle to breathe as they got worse and relearn how to grasp a spoon as they got better. And how, as of early June, only two COVID-19 patients — both
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online