Items

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  12/08/2021

  Shelby Kolar Oral History, 2021/12/08

  Shelby Kolar is a lifelong Eau Claire resident and Director of Nursing at a large long-term care facility in Eau Claire. In this interview, Shelby discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted her work and discusses how it has affected her family and friends. Shelby responded to my interview request because she felt it was important to share the high impact of COVID-19 on long-term care facilities and the geriatric population she cares for. Shelby highlights the emotional and mental toll of caring for the elderly during the pandemic and provides a deeper look into senior care as a whole. Shelby touches upon how her kids and husband managed the pandemic and the highs and lows of spending so much time together.
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  05/06/2021

  Bekah Henn Orak History, 2021/05/06

  C19OH
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  2021-08-13

  Our Post-Pandemic Healthcare World

  Our Post-Pandemic Healthcare World I definitely view our future post-pandemic world through the lens of someone who has worked many decades in health care. Though the pandemic has been a time of incredible stress for healthcare workers, for me I guess it is possible to identify two positives. The first is the extent to which staff who work in healthcare settings have so obviously provided exemplary care even when faced with PPE shortages, heartbreaking patient losses, and sporadic public resistance to masks and vaccines. As a RN in an administrative position at a Federally Qualified Health Center, I don’t work on the front lines myself, but I’m close enough to feel that I’m a part of the collective healthcare effort. Our clinic is affiliated with UCLA and we had - for example – a Dental Hygiene staff member deployed to assist in the MICU at Ronald Reagan UCLA. Right in the middle of COVID and she did so willingly. I work with inspiring people in an invigorating and purposeful setting. What a gift. The second positive is more clinical and pragmatic – the COVID pandemic has likely led to lasting infection control practice changes that were sorely needed. When I first started nursing school in the late 70’s, we would do all types of patient care without gloves and routinely had extensive exposure to blood and body fluids. The AIDS crisis resulted in permanent and necessary infection control changes. I’ve always felt that ambulatory care settings lacked adequate precautions when it came to diseases with the potential for respiratory transmission. Well, everyone understands screening and masking now. This is a positive that will result in a safer environment for patients and staff going forward. So, amazed at the extent to which healthcare workers have delivered every step of the way during the pandemic. Proud to be a Nurse. Happy that we all have a better understanding of respiratory precautions. These are my positive takeaways from COVID thus far.
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  2021-02-24

  Death, Through a Nurse's Eyes

  "A short film offering a firsthand perspective of the brutality of the pandemic inside a Covid-19 I.C.U." This reporter has nurses wear a camera so he can glimpse what happens in the Covid-19 units in an Arizona hospital.
• 2020-01-01

  Surviving 2020 & COVID-19 Pandemic: Life As A College Student

  As the ball dropped on New Year’s Day I embraced and kissed my boyfriend in excitement of what would await us in 2020, if only I knew. As we said our goodbyes to our friends we drove home on a side road to avoid the frantic traffic of drunk drivers and people rushing to get home. All I remember is driving in front of my boyfriend’s car and then waking up to him sobbing over me. My car lights were on, sunroof open, glass shattered everywhere, my blood stained on my wheel and purple bruises on ribs. Long story short I was smashed into by a drunk driver, my car flipped, rolled, and was finally crushed into a tree with me inside while my significant other watched it unravel before his eyes. This was my beginning to 2020 and I wished and hoped that it would only be better from there on but I was horribly wrong. On March 11th of 2020 I received an email from my university stating that it would be closed and urged all students to return home for the remainder of the semester. As many college students saw this as an extended spring break at the time we were all happy since it basically meant more partying. After week one passed of receiving the email I quickly realized that being isolated would be my downfall and it sure was. By the end of the Spring semester I had failed a couple classes and was desperately trying to crawl out of a depressive episode. Since I am, or rather struggling to be a nursing student still, failing my Anatomy and Physiology I class sent me into a spiral of what ifs and how my GPA would recover from these failed courses. The realization of retaking these courses in order to save my future and using my only two chances of “erasing” my unsatisfactory grades crushed me. I was shattered by this reality but continued to push myself through Summer term to ace these courses, I studied day and night sacrificing friendships and days out for an A. As Summer came to an end Fall came and I barely passed the classes online because I struggled to adapt and truly retain the material meanwhile peers in my class were either completely giving up or cheating their way through the online, remote exams. To add the cherry on top, I was battling my university’s Housing Board in order to cancel my dorm agreement because many COVID cases had been recorded in my building and my roommates still went out to clubs while not wearing masks. As the months passed and semesters came and went, I felt my sanity slipping and today I still sit in fear of my future. I struggle leaving my apartment due to the fear of exposure to COVID and accidentally passing it onto my only parent who suffers from lupus. This pandemic has truly crushed me and unfortunately it seems that I will be spending the remainder of my college life and 20s in this chaotic, barren, and lonely society where we only see each other screen to screen.
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  2021-01-24

  Doctor On What It's Like To Fight The Coronavirus On The Navajo Nation

  Interview between NPRs' Ari Shapiro and Chief Medical Officer of Indian Health Services, Dr. Loretta Christensen. Dr. Chirstensen discusses some of the challenges in covering an expansive area which includes Arizona, Utah, New Mexico.
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  2020-12-17

  Who should get the vaccine

  This article just explains who should, and should not, be getting the vaccine. This depends on your health status and other issues such as vaccine allergies.
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  2020-12-11

  Mother’s Journal Entries During Covid

  Corona was definitely hard for many families with health problems. I feel as though it was also difficult for families with people on the frontlines of the virus. My mother is a nurse at a local hospital. Because of her job, none of my family members and/or friends wanted to be around me. She works in the ICU so she is dealing with Covid positive patients constantly. Her journal entries include how she felt while working her job as well as how it affected her family-wise.
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  2020-05-01

  Re-Open-California

  Crowd control presses forward to end the assembly before it escalates further. A woman stayed seated as the world moved around her, and she nursed the child in her arms as her form of protest to the world happening around her as she knew it. Strangers joined her, seating themselves and protecting her and her child from being trampled by the swelling crowd. Twenty two people were arrested. The woman with her child walked home free. A surreal contrast in the beauty and innocence of children and chaos.
• 2020-05-01

  Untitled

  Crowd control presses forward to end the assembly before it escalates further. A woman stayed seated as the world moved around her, and she nursed the child in her arms as her form of protest to the world happening around her as she knew it. Strangers joined her, seating themselves and protecting her and her child from being trampled by the swelling crowd. Twenty two people were arrested. The woman with her child walked home free. A surreal contrast in the beauty and innocence of children and chaos.
• 
  5/14/2020

  Grace Neugebauer Oral History, 2020/05/14

  This interview was completed for a class project at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. The project was to contribute to a COVID-19 database while also working on a university database to show the importance of rapid response collection. The class was a research methods course called History 486 taught by Dr. Cheryl Jimenez Frei.
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  2020-05-20

  Nursing takes on new significance at the Blackfeet Care Center amid Covid-19

  “I want to compliment my staff on doing an awesome job,” she said. “Their hearts are totally in it, keeping people safe at all costs. Our number one goal is lives over everything.”
• 
  2020-05-01

  Humanizing the heroes

  Below is a photograph of Brian Sarkisian. An Auburn Mass. hometown hero, state champion baseball player, and now an essential medical worker at UMass Memorial Hospital in Worcester Massachusetts. Brian is a kind and gentle man whose only goal has ever been to help those in need. He is a nursing student at Worcester State University who previously picked up shifts at UMass Memorial as a student nurse to help people and gain experience for his practice. Now he works tirelessly around the clock handling non COVID-19 patients so that the doctors can focus their efforts. Brian speaks often about the business of the hospital and his constant fear of contracting the virus, but still he says that he would never trade or give up what he’s doing for the world. In a quote he gave me Mr. Sarkisian states “This is what I’ve always wanted to do. I’m in this field and in school for it because I want to make the worst times in people’s lives bearable”. Thank you for everything you do Brian Sarkisian.
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  2020-05-02

  University of San Francisco Acceptance Letter

  Attached you will find my admission letter to the School of Nursing and Health Professions at the University of San Francisco. Upon writing this entry, I have been admitted and secured my spot at the institution. I was admitted approximately one month ago, during the crisis itself. This photo of my admission letter is beyond meaningful to me even more so because of the circumstances we all are now facing. My passion for nursing has always been the driving force for how I conduct my school efforts. Despite my extensive family size, I actually am one of the first to enter the medical profession. I was inspired to enter into this field in high school when I shadowed a fellow family friend. I visited her at the Mercy San Juan Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and immediately was drawn to this unit. From that day, I never could consider any other field of study. I am in continuous awe of those on the frontlines, especially nurses and doctors. Upon admission to nursing school, typically clinicals would be a part of one’s first-semester curriculum. Due to the pandemic, my clinicals have actually been pushed back an additional semester. With nursing school especially, and the current incoming cohorts curriculum has drastically shifted. I point this out because no matter how big or small, in some way each of our lives has been changed by this event. At this point, I'm unaware if even my first semester will be held on campus. There is a rather high chance I will be online for my first semester of nursing school. All of our lives right now are for lack of a better word “tentative”, who knows how things will change or when things will resolve to normalcy. #CSUS #HIST15H
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  2020-03-01

  "Heaven Can Wait"

  A tribute to the healthcare workers at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Massachusetts. *Lucy Jimenez (senior at Concord Carlisle High School in Concord, Massachusetts - studying nursing at UPenn class of 2024)