Tonya is one of my favorite nurses to work with because she demonstrates so much compassion to all of her patients and always goes above and beyond to take care of them, no matter how difficult the task. I have never heard her complain about anything. I was working with her on the COVID team and she was taking care of two of my positive patients.
One of the patients had his wife also hospitalized in the ICU with COVID, and she had been on the ventilator for several days. He was very upset and sad because he had to make difficult decisions about her care the day before.
Tonya made me aware of his emotional distress (the patient felt a lot of guilt, was wondering if he made the right decisions, and stated that he would not want to live if his wife were to die) and suggested that we should arrange for him to visit her. After we got approval from the ICU, Tonya wheeled him over and stayed in all her PPE with him so that he could spend time with his critically ill wife, something that in the times of COVID, unfortunately, does not happen very much. The patient was transformed afterward, and it was like a heavy burden was lifted from him.
Tonya had lines on her face from the N95 and I am sure that she had to stay late to catch up on her charting. This truly shows that Tonya sees nursing as a calling and that she is always willing to go above the call of duty to take care of her patients. I can only hope that if I or a family member were to be hospitalized I would have a nurse like Tonya taking care of us. She recognizes that while we have medicines, we do not treat diseases, but we treat people, and her compassion and willingness to donate her time made a tremendous impact in patient care. I look forward to working with her in the future because I can trust that my patients receive above average, excellent, compassionate care.