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WIU nursing alumni share experiences during COVID-19 pandemic

Tabi Jozwick
Voice Correspondent

MACOMB/MOLINE — On Monday, six Western Illinois University School of Nursing alumni shared their experiences working the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of the WIU Purple and Gold Day of Caring “reboot,” the WIU Alumni Association brought back Jacob Ginelen, Kendra Moore and Kailyn Morrell to share their experiences of how their experiences changed since April. Brittaney Castleberry and recent alumni Eric Carrera and Michaela Leapley joined the three panelists who spoke in April.

WIU School of Nursing associate professor Lindsay White MSN, RN, CNE served as the moderator during the panel discussion. She had each alumnus share their front-line experiences with treating COVID-19 patients in their respective intensive care and COVID-19 units across the country.

Castleberry shared her New York COVID experiences of people who came to the hospital complaining about blood clots who ended up testing positive for COVID. Morrell said people without previous health issues spent weeks on a ventilator. Other alumni shared stories about how people who did not even have previous health issues died from COVID.

For the upcoming flu season, White asked the panel their thoughts about how COVID would impact the flu. She said that the Southern Hemisphere flu season (April to October) had a mild flu season due to wearing masks and social distancing. Ginelen recommended people getting the flu shot to help reduce flu cases during the pandemic.

One issue that the nursing school alumni talked about was that there are people not taking COVID seriously. Ginelen said people believed Google more than healthcare workers. Leapley said people even questioned the existence of COVID.

Both Morrell and Carrera said that people were not taking COVID seriously because some COVID symptoms are like both cold and flu symptoms. Carrera said people brushed off coughs as a COVID symptom while Morrell said people with mild COVID cases felt like “having the sniffles.”

“This can hit pretty much anyone,” Morrell said.

Carrera said one possible reason why COVID may not taken seriously is that some people care more about their social lives than preventing the spread of illness. He said that while he understood people want to live their lives outside of fear, but they should also be responsible during the pandemic by taking their health seriously and learning about how COVID spreads to others in case COVID comes around again or had to deal with it for years.

Castleberry said the people not taking it seriously because they thought the only way to be positive for COVID was to have symptoms. She shared during the panel discussion that an entire nursing home in her area tested positive for COVID and none of the people at the nursing home showed any symptoms. She said for those people, the only way they would learn was if they had actual hands-on experience with COVID-19.

“Once it hits their family, then they are on it,” Castleberry said. “Once it hits closer to home, they are like ‘oh, this is happening’ and then they take precautions, but by that time, it’s too late.”

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