A nurse’s account of Marin County battle against the coronavirus

Lynn Warner, R.N., has seen a lot in her 32 years working as a nurse. In 2004, she joined MarinHealth Medical Center in Greenbrae, where she also serves as the chief representative for the hospital’s approximately 550 unionized nurses.

Warner, 54, spoke with the Business Journal on July 24 about her experience over the years being exposed to a host of once-novel infectious diseases, and how the COVID-19 pandemic is both familiar and different. The following Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.

How close have you been to working on the front lines during COVID?

I'm a critical care nurse on a step-down unit, which takes care of patients that do not require the higher monitoring skills that an intensive care unit would provide. I come under a category below that, but we do take care of ventilator patients (including COVID-19), and patients on intravenous drugs to help monitor blood pressure and heart rate, etc.

Do you have adequate personal protective equipment?

Luckily, for the most part, we do have adequate supplies of PPE at MarinHealth.

The hospital has been very good. We have noticed deficiencies and lack of quality in some of the products. As a nurse union rep, I was able to talk to management and (my) human resources contacts that this was not a quality product and the nurses would like to see something different. And supposedly they have ordered a different product.

How have you been doing being in close contact with COVID patients?

I became a nurse because I love people and I want to help them no matter what. And being a nurse with so many years of experience, this is how it was when the AIDS crisis happened in the 80s. We've lived through MERS, SARS, Ebola, swine flu, bird flu.

Now we have COVID-19. It’s another infectious disease that is novel and new, like AIDS was many years ago. It’s something that becomes part of our workplace environment.

It’s interesting that you look at COVID-19 in a similar way as other novel infectious diseases that you have seen throughout your career.

I will admit, though, this is so new to us all and we don't have a lot of information.

With swine flu, MERS, SARS, with bird flu, we had the infection prevention specialists, the infectious disease doctors, (so) they had some knowledge about this. … But unfortunately, (COVID-19) came into our country in January — that we know about — so the scientists and the physicians did not have a lot of prep time to know exactly what was going to be needed.

It sounds like what is different to you with COVID-19 is not so much that it’s a novel disease, but that it was mismanaged and got out of control.

I was surprised that the government knew about this last year, say in November, December. The government was warned about this but chose not to take any action. We used to have a whole pandemic (plan) that monitored these organisms that cause disease. But unfortunately, that was disbanded. If we had kept that available, maybe we could have been (better) warned or taken more precautions.

Has COVID done anything to change your plans to stay working as a nurse?

No. I'll continue to work as a nurse; that's what I've been trained for. What I and other nurses find frustrating, is one day we do something that is set forth by the CDC or OSHA or the public health department, and then the next day (they) switch our minds.

Nurses are smart; they're going to go with what they feel is the safest. If this is an airborne-transmitted disease, we're not going to wear just a surgical mask going into a patient's room that is COVID-positive or there’s a possibility that they could be COVID-positive. We are going to wear the higher-grade N95 mask and a face shield over that. We are going to suit up and wear the PPP because it's obvious that the officials at a higher level are not sure, and they are not letting the public and/or the health care professionals know how to protect themselves most.

The personal protective equipment, such as gowns, masks, gloves, those are disposable, but my life as a nurse is not disposable. That is why it is so important that hospitals provide the appropriate PPE to their health care workers. And that health care worker can be a registered nurse like myself, it can be a nursing assistant, it can be the environmental service workers.

Have you noticed any fears among newer nurses?

Oh yes, they're scared. And I was like that in the beginning of my career taking care of HIV/AIDS patients because we didn't know a lot about it.

Have you seen any nurses decide to leave the profession because of COVID-19?

No, I've not seen that in my institution.

How did having patients from San Quentin State Prison coming to the hospital affect you and other nurses?

I take care of a patient no matter if the person is a prisoner, someone who has been in a car accident or someone who needs a knee replacement. Whatever it is, I'm there for the patient. … My feeling as a nurse and most other nurses that I know, is it might be frustrating in the intensive care unit where you've got six positive COVID patients and all six are from San Quentin prison because they have to have their guards around. … For other patients in the ICU with other disease processes going on and who need treatment, it can be chaotic at times … but it doesn't in any way (affect) their care.

If you had a crystal ball, what might you predict going forward with COVID-19?

The thing is, we don't know. We're finding out possible long-term effects of this disease. We don't have a vaccine for it yet. We just have to be prepared by following certain techniques, like washing your hands, which we should always be doing. … And let's face it, as the world becomes larger and as we travel more, we have to be aware of new viruses being formed, new organisms. A lot of these organisms are animal-to-person transmission, so we have to be more aware of that.

Is there anything you would like to say in closing?

I just wish everyone in California and in the United States would take this seriously and understand that by putting a mask on, you're protecting yourself and you're protecting everyone around you. A simple task like that would help get control of this virus and get control of this disease.