Edmara Nieves
Attending physician, emergency room, Broward Health Medical Center
Background: Nieves earned her medical degree at Ponce Health Sciences University School of Medicine in Puerto Rico and completed her residency at Orlando Health. She teaches emergency medicine to students and residents as a faculty member at Nova Southeastern University and Florida International University.
Pandemic stories: Fear strikes the Broward Health Medical Center ER team when paramedics call from the ambulance to say theyโre bringing in a COVID-19 patient in respiratory distress. โWe donโt know if we are doing enough to protect ourselves,โ Nieves says. โThereโs a reason why [some 800] U.S. health care workers have died because of COVID [as of mid-July, according to reporting by The Guardian and Kaiser Health News].โ
Pregnant with her first baby, a boy who is due in September, Nieves has been particularly worried about her health.
โItโs so terrifying because as a pregnant female, Iโm considered immuno-compromised,โ she says. โIf I get infected, my immune system wonโt be able to fight off the virus as well as if I werenโt pregnant.โ
Her gynecologist suggested she stop working, but she didnโt want to abandon her team in a time of need. Although she did perform some โcrash intubationsโ when the pandemic first hitโthe insertion of a tube into a patientโs tracheaโshe no longer gets that close to sick patients; her team members do the procedure instead.
โItโs one of the scariest times in our professional career,โ she says. โWe go into medicine, and we spend over 10 years just studying to learn the diagnostics and therapeutics that have proven to be safe and efficacious. But now this pandemic comes in, and weโre facing this giant with little to no evidence about what works.โ
She recognizes the emotional and financial burdens of the spring lockdown. But from a physical health perspective, Nieves saw its benefits.
โPeople were staying home, they were being good, so the COVID volume went down significantlyโ in May, she says. โWe were feeling very hopeful.โ
But a false sense of security led to what she calls โa 180-degree turn.โ In July, more than 60% of the visits to Broward Healthโs ER Room were COVID-19 patients, she says.
As South Florida makes headlines as a viral epicenter, Nieves reflects with chagrin on the communityโs handling of the pandemic. People are resuming normal activity without wearing masks.
โIt came to a point where we became comfortable with the situation, with the numbers we were seeing, with starting up our lives again,โ she says. โWe dismissed the highly virulent, life-threatening enemy. The virus is still hereโit was just waiting for us to make a mistake.โ
