From mid-March to mid-June, nurse Kelly Rosenberg, B.S.N., R.N., stood in Suburban Hospital’s parking garage for hours each workday, swaddled head to toe in personal protective equipment as she gave drive-through COVID-19 tests.
With two other nurses per shift, Rosenberg signed in people as they arrived for appointments, swabbed their nasal passages as they sat in their cars, and packed the swabs for testing.
It was a change from her usual work in pre-surgical testing. “The appointments were five minutes apart,” she says. “When I started, it was freezing cold, and when I finished in June it was hot.”
But she was glad to do it, Rosenberg says. She and her colleagues were among dozens of Suburban Hospital nurses redeployed to COVID-19-related assignments in the first months of the coronavirus pandemic.
The assignment shifts happened in mid-March, just days after the hospital opened its new North Building. Patients with COVID-19 began arriving for care, while emergency surgeries and other services were put on hold across the Johns Hopkins Health System.
“There were people who needed something to do, and there were areas where we absolutely needed extra people,” says Cindy Notobartolo, M.S., B.S.N., R.N., C.H.E.P., H.E.M., administrative director of emergency/trauma, safety and employee health. “We were able to redeploy nurses to where they were needed most.”
The process was “like a game of chess,” says LeighAnn Sidone, D.N.P., R.N., C.E.N.P., chief nursing officer and interim hospital president. Sidone and her team had to figure out quickly which nurses to deploy where, and make sure they had the training and safety equipment they needed.
Nurses who normally worked in operating rooms or post-anesthesia units were tapped to care for COVID-19 patients, says Karin Nevius, B.S.N., R.N., CCRN-K, director of professional practice and nursing quality.
And it made sense for pre-surgery testing nurses like Rosenberg to administer COVID-19 tests in the drive-through site quickly set up in the hospital’s parking garage.
“They were remarkable in their ability to take on new skills,” says Nevius of the redeployed nurses. “To learn someone else’s world, to immerse themselves in that way, it really was incredible.”
Some nurses were nervous at first about taking on the new assignments, fearful of infecting themselves or their families. “At the time, I had a 3-year-old at home,” Rosenberg says. “It was the beginning of COVID-19, so we were all learning about it. I was afraid of bringing it home.”
But having the opportunity to ask questions and learn safety protocols allayed her worries, she says.
Elizabeth Ozeki, B.S.N., R.N., an operating room nurse reassigned to care for patients with COVID-19 who were not in intensive care, also says she never felt nervous about her own safety. She had enough personal protective equipment, she says, and was trained in how to use it correctly, including donning and doffing techniques.
In June, as the number of patients with COVID-19 receded, the hospital resumed elective surgeries. Ozeki returned to her operating room responsibilities.
“If there’s a big surge again, I’m willing to go back,” she says. “It was a good experience. It was nice to be welcomed to another unit.”
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