PLATTSBURGH — Celebrating nursing alumni and healthcare workers at its first-ever Founders’ Weekend, Clinton Community College welcomed back graduates to campus Saturday to share their experiences working in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Each year, CCC celebrates one of its graduates with the Outstanding Alumni Award, but it decided to recognize all of its nursing alumni this year for their work during a public health crisis in the last year and a half.
QUICKEST DECISION
It was an easy choice, CCC’s Alumni Association Treasurer James Jock said Saturday.
“We certainly couldn’t have gotten this far through a pandemic without all of you and all of our other nursing alumni,” Jock said. “When we talked about who we were going to award this to this year, I think that was the quickest discussion we had.”
Wendy Baker, vice president of educational advancement at CCC, said the college has about 1,406 nursing alumni and 80% of them work locally in healthcare facilities.
“The majority of our students are non-traditional, so they have families; they may have had other careers and are coming in for their second or they maybe didn’t go to college to begin with, so they come back to us as solidified members of our community and they end up staying,” said Katrina Evens, director of Nursing and Allied Health at CCC.
“We provide a majority of the nursing workforce for the facilities around, including Vermont.”
'YOU KNOW THE PEOPLE'
Darrin Ries would have been considered one of those non-traditional students before he graduated in 2013. At 40 years old, he enrolled at CCC to find his second career and now works in surgical services at Northwestern Medical Center in his hometown of St. Albans, Vermont.
“In the small community I’m from in Vermont, you know the people, They’re people you’ve grown up with. They’re your teachers; they’re your neighbors, your coaches,” Ries said. “So it’s nice to have a face that you recognize that’s caring for you in a hospital and bring that hometown feel. I think that helps a lot in the healing process.”
Reis said nursing has been the best thing he’s ever done, but in the pandemic, it’s also become one of the hardest.
A couple months ago, a patient he recognized came into Northwestern Medical COVID-positive. She was in her 60s, overweight and diabetic.
Reis was working a shift in the hospital’s progressive care unit, where he said he was needed. The hospital had been losing staff after some left to become traveling nurses, a growing and often better-paying option for many nurses as facilities around the country are short-staffed. Others had also left for bigger facilities, Ries said.
Now with less staff and a new wave of COVID-19 patients, Ries said his hospital had trouble keeping up. It was much different from the majority of the pandemic, when the hospital prepared for a surge that never came, Ries said.
LAST PHONE CALL
But despite the conditions Ries’ patient had, he said she was doing OK. But later in his shift, he was told her oxygen was low and couldn’t be increased. It was recommended she be put on a ventilator.
“I remember talking with this lady, and she was just about to be intubated,” Ries said. “Just before the doctor was to give the meds, just before, her phone rang. I said to the doctor if we should let her get it, and he said, ‘They can call her back.’”
But even after being put on the ventilator, Ries said, her oxygen levels couldn’t reach over the 80s. He couldn’t stop thinking about that phone call.
By the end of his shift, Ries was informed the patient was being transported to UVM Medical Center. But by his next shift, a doctor told Ries she had died.
“Less than 12 hours after that woman had been intubated, who never answered that phone, passed away. Here I was one day, one patient, and I felt COVID,” Ries said. “I couldn’t even fathom what all these nurses across the country have been feeling.”
Ries’ message Saturday, like the other alumni who spoke, was that the pandemic isn’t going away.
“I think every person in this country, politician or non-politician, should hear that phone ring that doesn’t get answered,” Ries said.
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Twitter: @byfernandoalba
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