COVID: ‘Learn as you go’ for healthcare

Editor's note: This story constitutes half of the two-part final entry in the Leader's series on the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As COVID-19 started becoming a reality in Lincoln Parish a year ago, Northern Louisiana Medical Center did what most other healthcare and frontline agencies did.

“It was a lot of learning as you go,” Rusty Breaux, registered nurse at the 130-bed acute care hospital said.

Protocols coming from the Centers for Disease Control and other regulatory agencies were vague and constantly changing.

“It was changing so rapidly, it was hard to keep up with all of it,” hospital CEO Kathy Hall said.

Hall came to NLMC in January; she was CEO at Winn Parish Medical Center in Winnfield last spring. Both Winn Parish Medical Center and NLMC admitted their first COVID-19 patients in March.

Hospitals across the state, including NLMC, halted most elective procedures at the time to free up resources and to protect patients and others from the spread of the disease. They also stopped allowing visitors.

“We were totally locked down for months,” Hall said.

NLMC set up a designated COVID ward with the required negative airflow. Early on, about 10 people were hospitalized with the potentially fatal respiratory virus. But soon, the hospital dedicated 16 beds for pandemic patients.

Numbers were not available as to how many COVID patients have been hospitalized over the year, but there were times when the COVID intensive care unit was full. As of March 17, the date of the interview for this story, NLMC had no COVID patients.

Long-time Ruston physician Dr. Allen Herbert diagnosed some of Lincoln Parish’s first COVID cases. He called the nation’s initial response to the pandemic “nonexistent.”

“I think everybody had their head in the sand. Maybe it just won’t happen. Maybe it will go way,” Herbert said. “I’m not sure anybody in those early days knew the extent to which it would go.”

Breaux, who’s been a nurse for 15 years, said healthcare workers’ first reaction to the encroaching pandemic was fear.

“Simply the unknown,” he said.

But as they saw more and more COVID patients, “the fear slowly transitioned to grief, just to numb.”

Nurses talked by phone to COVID patients’ families two, three, maybe more times a day. The hospital had a dedicated iPad for Facetiming patients and their families.

“We just did what we had to do to help these people get through,” Hall said.

Sometimes the randomness of the virus won.

“You would watch these people, and on day eight or 12, they would just decline. You watched them getting better, and then they would just crash,” Hall said.

Eighty-four Lincoln Parish residents have died from COVID-19, according to the Louisiana Department of Health. Seven more deaths are probably linked to the pandemic, LDH reports.

Of those deaths, 48% were African Americans, though only 40% of the parish is African American. Of the 3,278 confirmed cases as of Monday, 33% were among African Americans.

Maurice White is pastor of Ruston’s Zion Traveler Baptist Church, a predominantly Black church with about 400 members.

White’s officiated at approximately 21 funerals for COVID victims. Not all were members of his flock.

COVID has disproportionately affected the black community in Lincoln Parish, just as it has nationwide, White said. Disparity in healthcare, underlying conditions and family gatherings may all be to blame, he said.

White said he’s considering preaching a series of sermons on grief.

“Nobody’s had the opportunity to really grieve,” he said. “You don’t even get to be with (a loved one) and hold their hand when they pass away.”

White said he saw a shift in attitude when the late 5th District Congressman-elect Luke Letlow died on Dec. 29 of complications from COVID. Letlow, 41, had been diagnosed on Dec. 18, about two weeks after his election.

Letlow’s death appeared to make COVID more real, White said.

Lincoln Parish is in the 5th District.

White said some good could come from the long-term impact of COVID-19.

“I think it’s going to open some doors for us to deal with some of the healthcare issues in our parish,” he said.

Meantime, NLMC’s Hall said the stress of the pandemic has driven some nurses away from hospital work. Worsening of the existing nursing shortage could be one of the pandemic’s lingering effects.

But COVID has also brought out an extra measure of empathy, Hall said.

“I saw a lot of nurses going that extra mile to try to reassure and connect with families,” Hall said. “It brought back a lot of compassion into the nursing side of it.”

“It gave some people a new vigor, a new reason to be here,” Breaux said.

Though NLMC is still seeing COVID patients, the number is declining, and the patients are not as ill. Now, unlike March 2020, there are some treatment protocols.

And while the pandemic isn’t over, the situation is better than 2020.

“It was a very different year,” Hall said. “I hope it’s a year that doesn’t come back.”