After 44 years, this Tri-Cities nurse has never faced a greater challenge

Tri-Cities nurse Nancy Briggs says the coronavirus can’t compare to any other period in her four decades in the medical field.

The Tri-City native started working at Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland after she graduated from Columbia Basin College in 1976. The only exception was a few years spent in Spokane earning her bachelor’s of nursing at Washington State University.

“This is the biggest medical challenge I can remember in my career because it effects everyone,” she told the Tri-City Herald.

And she’s seen a lot in her 44 years as a nurse.

Briggs has worked in many roles from intensive care to the operating room and now provides orientation for new employees, as well as clinical orientation for nurses.

She worked through the AIDS crisis when she says they didn’t always wear gloves or have personal protective equipment (PPE).

COVID-19 is different.

“It even affects home life — and we’ve never limited visitors (at the hospital),” she said.

Protocol for clinical orientation is largely been the same, Briggs said. In the past, hospitals may have had to figure it out on their own. Now, there are computers and evidence-based medicine is widely shared.

“With COVID, we have public health and CDC guidance,” Briggs said. Even when people come from other hospitals — we know what is evidenced based, what is proven to really work.”

Even if protocol is consistent, she is giving new employee orientation online and providing orientation to nurses in small groups while following social distancing and safety guidelines.

And she is spending more time answering questions and helping as much as possible to ease people’s minds about caring for COVID-19 patients.

Caring for patients and families

Nurses are giving care in an unfamiliar era, and Briggs says it is hard on the front-line staff.

“We are so used to caring for patients and their family,” she said. “People drop off their loved one and it is very hard to watch. You want to go up and hug that person and can’t. I have to give comfort through my eyes and what I say.”

Even still, nurses are finding ways to include family. Whether through Facebook or phone calls, Briggs said they are caring for patients’ families the best they can.

“It is great watching everyone work together and do the very best to help each other and offer support,” she said.

Nurses efforts during COVID-19 aren’t going unnoticed and are being particularly celebrated during National Nurses Week.

National Nurses Day was May 6, which kicked off the week. It ends May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, a nurse who was a reformer of modern medicine and died in 1910 at age 90.

Jim Hall, director of executive and community relations, said the outpouring of community support has been overwhelming over the past weeks.

Virtually every member of the hospital has been a recipient of a free meal whether housekeeping or a doctor. And Briggs’ office was decorated for Nurse Appreciation Day with balloons and flowers.

“People are saying thank you all the time,” Briggs said. “People really care what I do.”