Coronavirus heroes: For nurse on the front lines of COVID-19 fight, grateful patients got her through
A typical day for Cassidy Goe begins at 3 or 4 p.m., when she wakes up, gets ready and drives from Lewistown to State College, where she works the night shift in the Mount Nittany Medical Center emergency department.
And during the coronavirus pandemic, days and nights have been anything but typical.
“It has definitely forced me to be resilient and open to change,” Goe said over a recent video call.
Goe has been an emergency department nurse at the hospital for more than four years. Over the past few months, that has meant being among the first to examine possible COVID-19 patients when they enter the hospital.
“We screen them, we examine them, and we determine if they’re at risk for COVID or if we’re concerned that they may have COVID,” Goe said.
In an ever-changing environment, Goe had to adapt many times to procedure changes while caring for patients, sometimes even during the middle of a shift.
“We changed the way we triaged patients, that we were concerned about that could have COVID. We brought them to a separate entrance in a safer area to be screened. We changed the flow of the emergency department, in terms of which areas are opened and closed during the evening,” Goe said.
A 15-minute huddle at the start of Goe’s shift was usually how she’d learn about any changes or updates with the evolving situation.
“That was really where we found out what was new for the coronavirus that day. They would tell us how many cases we had that day, if there was a new masking procedure for the staff or the patients, they’d tell us if there was a new visitation policy,” Goe said.
During the predicted peak of the virus, Goe said she saw fewer cases of COVID.
“Around the time that they were predicting we were going to have a huge surge ... we just started to see more people concerned that they had the coronavirus come in. Not necessarily a huge uptick in the number of cases, but we saw a lot of people who started to get really worried that their cough might be COVID.
“We did of course see coronavirus cases and a lot of people who were concerned they had it, but we had a decreased number of visitors and people coming in,” Goe said.
Caring for those who had the coronavirus — those who had received positive tests and came back due to complications — Goe said, was an entirely different “ballgame.”
“When you are caring for a patient that you know has the coronavirus ... that can be very scary and very overwhelming,” she said.
Before entering a COVID-19 patient’s room, Goe would put on a gown, gloves, a face shield and an N95 mask.
“In an effort to keep my co-workers safe, I go into the room by myself. So I don’t have anybody in there to help me. You do all of the testing yourself. The EKG to look at their heart, you start IV — maybe multiple IVs, and get blood work. Sometimes it’s complicated bloodwork and you need it from two different locations,” she said.
Depending on the patient, care can be time consuming, and Goe said that’s where teamwork comes in.
“You’re in there for 45 minutes, and you may have other patients on top of this one patient. You really have to rely on your co-workers to really step it up and help you with your other patients,” she said. “It’s really the teamwork of the ER that you have to rely on. If I didn’t have my co-workers that had my back, it would be almost impossible to care for everybody at the level of care they deserve.”
What drives Goe to continue when things get tough is the kindness and appreciation patients show her.
“Little things make the job really rewarding for me,” Goe said. “When a patient is appreciative of the fact that we’re here and we’re helping to take care of them ... patients who come in for toe pain, who have an ingrown nail that need looked at, are so thankful that we’re here to take care of them. People are really understanding, the fact that we’re putting ourselves at risk doing this job.”