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Most people who work in the medical field are selfless professionals who want to help others. With the recent COVID-19 pandemic, this quality is even more apparent as they literally risk their lives to do their jobs. We’re highlighting four mothers who work in the medical field. We truly appreciate everything they do for their patients, their families, and our community.
Jordan Fredrickson
Jordan is a registered nurse who works in the skilled nursing wing of a local nursing home. As a charge nurse she works with residents who need long-term, high-needs care, or short-term care while recovering from an illness or injury. Jordan oversees the daily medical needs of the residents, including giving them medications, administering treatments, and monitoring any chronic medical conditions they may have.
Jordan has been a nurse for two years and in her current position for six months. She loves being able to take care of the elderly population and provide them with the loving, compassionate care that she would give her parents or grandparents. Unlike a hospital with acute patients, she mostly works with long term residents, so it is easy for her to develop relationships and become attached to them.
Even though she is not on the front lines in the ER or ICU battling COVID 19, she is still anxious because she feels a profound responsibility to care for and protect the residents.
Her facility is screening all employees before they come into the building and rationing the personal protection equipment in case they need to take an overflow COVID positive patient from an area hospital.
One of the unanticipated difficulties is that the facility has been on a visitor lockdown for over a month now, and it’s hard for some of the residents to understand why their loved ones aren’t coming to see them anymore. Medical providers are the residents’ only real connection to the outside world now, which places a lot of pressure on the staff.
Jordan tries to assist in facilitating phone calls, video chats, and visits through windows as much as possible. The pandemic has created an air of anxiety, especially for some of the residents who have memory issues and thrive in a structured, scheduled environment. It is stressful, but the staff is devoted to making the residents lives as normal and as happy as possible and will continue to do so through this crisis.
Jordan’s husband is in the Navy and a master’s degree student at Naval Postgraduate school. Her daughter goes to preschool when she is working. She worries about potential exposures with her daughter in daycare but she does not have a choice and feels fortune that her daughter’s daycare is still open.
Jordan’s biggest fear is getting infected and bringing it home to her family. She also worries that she may be an asymptomatic carrier and bring it into the facility. When not at work, she is diligently sheltering in place to minimize contact with the outside world.
Sarah Ofstedal Ramer
A physical therapist in home health,
Sarah goes to the homes of patients. She works with them on restoring independence by improving their mobility, usually after an illness or hospitalization. Sarah works out of her car with all of her supplies in the back seat.
She has been a physical therapist for 16 years – the past two years in home health. She loves getting to know her patients and helping them develop a plan so that they can live their lives outside their home.
Her current biggest challenge is managing her supplies. She has a strict system in her car to control the risk of cross-contamination. She must reuse masks because of the shortage, and home health agencies are struggling to get restocked. She isn’t sure where things stand with assistance from the State of California, and Sarah worries that home health won’t receive needed funding from Washington.
Another challenge she faces is that her job demands that she stands close to her patients and at times physically assist them, putting them both at risk for possible transfer of the virus.
Sarah recently made the difficult decision to be one of the therapists on staff treating patients who are currently or were positive for COVID. These patients have gone through a crisis and need extensive rehab to get their lives back.
Due to the lack of supplies, she is working as a team with her coworkers in creating a system that helps stretch their resources, while not ignoring reasonable infection control.
Sarah says that she feels torn between continuing to work with her patients and being home with her daughter. Her husband is also an essential worker who works at night further complicating their lives.
Sarah’s daughter is in kindergartner and is now being home schooled. Because she’s at work all day, and her daughter is in daycare, they can’t begin schoolwork until after the work day ends. Between school work, dinner preparation, getting ready for bed, and a limited amount of family time, it’s been a difficult situation.
Sarah is grateful for the support the family is getting from her daughter’s teacher, and she knows that they’ll get through this together.
Weslee Scott
Weslee is a Medical Assistant and Phlebotomist. She takes a patient’s vitals, asks about the reason for the visit, and may need to draw blood. She gives immunizations and injections of pain meds and steroids. She also provides specialist referrals.
Weslee has worked at her current job for a year but has been in the medical field for eight years. She loves helping patients but also faces some challenges. She has the occasional difficult patient who she deals with by reminding herself that people come to the doctor when they are aren’t feeling well. She also struggles with not being able to see her sons as often as she would like to since she is working.
Due to the Coronavirus, her clinic has decreased the hours they are open and reduced hours the employees work. For her, that means shorter hours and less money, but the upside is she also gets to see her children more.
Jennifer Zeidberg, MD.
As an Obstetrics and Gynecology doctor in private practice, Jennifer delivers about 15 babies per month and performs surgery at CHOMP and the Monterey Peninsula Surgery Center. She has had a private practice since 2011 and has been a doctor for 19 years.
In an ordinary week, Jennifer sees 100-110 patients in her office. She delivers anywhere between 2-5 babies and performs 1-3 surgeries. Her patients see her for obstetrical care, well-woman exams, evaluations for abnormal bleeding, infections, contraception, and cancer.
Currently, she is seeing less than 40 patients in a week. She is trying to space out necessary appointments so that no patient waits in the waiting area and to give staff time to disinfect all patient areas between visits.
When Jennifer gets home, she has a strict routine of stripping down in her garage and throwing her scrubs in the hot wash. She cleans her phone, leaves her clogs outside, runs inside and washes hands/face, and only then will she see her family. If she is exposed, she plans to quarantine in her office, as one of her colleagues did. It is her job to care for patients and do no harm; it is also her responsibility and privilege to keep her families safe.
In an ordinary week, her three kids are in school all week and have sports and activities every weekend. Her husband is a professor at CSUMB, so he teaches during the kids’ school hours and is home for them when they get out. Currently, he’s teaching virtually. Her oldest son is home from his freshman year at college, her special needs son is doing online learning from Pacific Grove High School, and her daughter is virtual learning through Pacific Grove Middle School. The earliest disappointments were seeing her children’s sports events canceled. This is her daughter’s last year with her sports team and that, coupled with classes being cancelled, was a tough blow.
The most challenging part for Jennifer has been watching her special needs son flounder. Away from the Pacific Grove Unified School District program that had given him the routine and interventions he needed has been difficult. Each day he wakes up asking about school, and if there’s no school, then he thinks that there should be outings to Bookworks Book Store or Rising Star Gymnastics–his pre-pandemic weekend activities. His family works to help him enjoy his days but there’s a lot of screen time which is tough for him to handle.
Ordinarily, her discussions with her patients are about how their health is, what’s happening with the preparations for their child’s birth, or celebrating family events. Currently, Jennifer spends more time talking about COVID and how to best prepare for prevention without increasing anxiety. Jennifer is also seeing an increase in postpartum depression, especially around loss of employment and/or insurance coverage. She spends time with patients dispelling myths they may have seen on social media. There is so much fear and anxiety, and it’s heartbreaking to Jennifer.
While she feels fortunate to live in a state and county that adopted guidelines to keep the infection numbers low, COVID-19 has had a significant impact on every aspect of Jennifer’s life, from home to work, even though this virus has not directly touched her.
Thank You Medical Moms!
We want to say a huge thank you to all the medical moms who continue to work in their profession despite the risk to their own lives and the sacrifice to their own families. We truly appreciate all that you are doing.
Cheryl Maguire holds a Master of Counseling Psychology degree. She is married and is the mother of twins and a daughter. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, Parents Magazine, AARP, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Count Your Blessing, Your Teen Magazine and other publications. You can find her at Twitter @CherylMaguire05.