Five years ago this week, in March 2020, the world shut down over the spread of COVID-19. Kansas City cancelled its St. Patrick’s Day Parade. More precautions, like a stay-at-home order and mask mandate, soon followed.
Carrie Willis, a nurse of nearly 30 years, was on the front lines. As a nurse manager at St. Luke’s East Hospital in Lee’s Summit, she oversaw one of the hospital’s COVID units through early 2021.
In a recent interview with KCUR’s Kansas City Today, Willis said that in those early days and weeks, information was changing so quickly, it was hard to know how to keep staff and patients safe.
“There just was a lot of fear, and we just really had to cry together, bond together,” Willis said. “But this is what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to take care of our community, and we’ve got to take care of each other.”
But as the years went on, Willis was dismayed and frustrated that effective public health measures like masks became the subject of political debate and public skepticism. Eventually, she realized the toll that her pandemic experience took on her mental health.
“I definitely felt like I had some residual trauma there,” she said. “I did have to speak with someone professionally about that.”
The pandemic also changed the health care profession in unexpected ways, such as increasing the availability of virtual health appointments, which previously were rare. “We had a rapid increase in how we used technology,” Willis said.
Ultimately, the experience reaffirmed Willis’s belief in nursing as her calling.
“It made me more resilient,” she said. “If I made it through that, I can make it through anything.”
Listen to the full interview with Willis, and read excerpts from the conversation below. They have been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
On the loosening of pandemic restrictions:
For the longest time, we were on lockdown, and no one could visit their loved ones in the hospital. And that put such an enormous stress on the nursing staff to not only have to be clinically providing all of the care for the patient, but also be their entire emotional support as well.
That was another moment where it was like, OK, this is better. We can survive this. But I think for my team, one of the biggest moments was when the masking restriction was lifted.
On the controversy around masks and other pandemic health orders:
It just made our job so much harder. There were so many things that were politicized about the pandemic that didn't need to be. Nurses are just here to take care of patients, to comfort them, to provide sometimes very technical care that requires a lot of education and training.
And for the majority of nursing, politics really doesn't come into play for us to do our job. That just really made it so much harder to come to work and to be caught in the middle.
In the beginning of the pandemic, we had such an outpouring of love, with the community and people sending food and coffee and just things like that. And then it quickly changed over time due to all of the social, political events going on, with people reacting to things. The distrust of health care and nurses was something we were not used to. I just think it was really frustrating, just deflating.
On how the pandemic affected her relationship to work:
It just has changed everything. It just further confirmed that nursing really is a calling, that there is no more essential worker than nursing. I wish it had never happened, but I do think that it shined a light on the difficulties of health care and staffing and just all of the things that go into providing care for patients.
Society's thoughts about health care and all of that have changed, some for the better and some for the worse. For me, what's changed is my disappointment in society, and how quickly things can sway based off of information that isn't correct.
On how the pandemic changed her personal life:
I got to get through it and survive it. I wasn't the best at evaluating each step of the way. I think sometimes nurses are not good at that. We're just so used to being the caretaker of everyone else that we don't always take stock in how we're doing ourselves.
So after I got through it, I really did look back and do some self-evaluation. I definitely felt like I had some residual trauma there. And so I did have to speak with someone professionally about that. It changed my views on seeking out counseling or, even just talking through difficult situations with friends, or professionals.
Did it change me? I think it did. I think in some ways it was for the better. It made me more resilient and feel like if I made it through that, I can make it through anything.
And I think it helped me realize that I am not immune to mental health issues, and needing to find support and seek help in times where you feel like you've gone through something really traumatic.
