Year of the Nurse

When nurse Cassandra Alexander saw a video of nurses in Italy “proning” their COVID patients, she recognized a serious situation.

On 9 March 2020, at the start of the COVID pandemic, author Cassandra Alexander, an ICU nurse in a hospital in California, watched a video of nurses in Italy “proning” their patients — turning them on their stomachs.

People with COVID have more lung tissue at the back of their lungs than at the front, so placing them on their stomachs gives them access to a greater lung surface area to aid their breathing. However, proning an intubated patient is dangerous, and nurses only perform such tasks when absolutely necessary. Such procedures require nurses to sedate and often paralyze patients, which leaves patients helpless, in need of constant checking and vulnerable to pressure sores unless someone moves them regularly. An intubated patient on his or her stomach demands one-on-one nursing care.

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) shortages meant nurses had to source their own masks.

When the first suspected COVID cases came to Alexander’s hospital in March, no rapid tests existed...