Thursday is National Nurses Day and NBC 6 wants to celebrate by saying thank you to all the nurses, especially now during the pandemic.
“It’s been, as you can imagine, extremely emotional and physically taxing on everyone in the healthcare profession,” says Sophia Barbara, a registered nurse at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.
She is one of the many nurses who stand side-by-side the thousands of COVID-19 patients in need.
“The past few months I’ve been taking care taking direct care of COVID ICU patients as well as regular ICU [patients],” says Barbara.
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Barbara’s hours are long, and the work can be grueling.
“These patients are so sick,” Barbara said as she described what she has been seeing in her hospital unit. “I’m constantly not stopping. I don’t have time to eat sometimes. And it’s been very, very exhausting.”
She never imagined being thrust into a worldwide battle against an invisible enemy when she began her career three years.
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“I tell myself, 'What did is sign up for?'” says Barbara. “Because never in a million years did I think in my first few years in ICU I would be working in the face of a pandemic.”
But her career is what she loves. A devotion to the welfare of those patients in her care.
"I became a nurse first of all because I love helping people and being there for people is what I love and what I find joy in every day,” explains Barbara. “And it has been a really humbling experience and it’s made me a better person, a better friend. It’s definitely made me more companionate and more resilient."
