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  2020-07-12

  A Nurse at Tucson Medical Center

  Tucson Medical Center went from no Covid patients in January 2020 to approx 160 at the peak (actually our third) in January 2021. It was amazing to see how quickly beds were repurposed, negative flow rooms were engineered, elective surgeries were cancelled and all the staff rallied around the ever changing patient case loads. Paula Marshall, RN July 12, 2020 at TMC Bed Control Department I work at Bed Control. We accepted patients from mostly southern Arizona from our ER and from the surrounding rural hospital. The Covid Surg line would call distributing covid patients needing admission throughout the area. When I graduated from nursing school in 1974, I never guessed that our world would experience a pandemic in my lifetime. I never knew that my job would change the way my family viewed my job. I don’t work at the bedside but work in an office and contribute to bed utilization. My son’s family lives 6 miles from me but I was invited to visit 4 times during 2020. My granddaughter said, “you work in a hospital. You could have Covid and not know it.” Gee whiz