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Heroes of the Pandemic: Edmara Nieves

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 theyโ€™re bringing in a COVID-19 patient in respiratory distress. โ€œWe donโ€™t know if we are doing enough to protect ourselves,โ€ Nieves says. โ€œThereโ€™s 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.

โ€œItโ€™s so terrifying because as a pregnant female, Iโ€™m considered immuno-compromised,โ€ she says. โ€œIf I get infected, my immune system wonโ€™t be able to fight off the virus as well as if I werenโ€™t pregnant.โ€

Her gynecologist suggested she stop working, but she didnโ€™t want to abandon her team in a time of need. Although she did perform some โ€œcrash intubationsโ€ when the pandemic first hitโ€”the insertion of a tube into a patientโ€™s tracheaโ€”she no longer gets that close to sick patients; her team members do the procedure instead.

โ€œItโ€™s one of the scariest times in our professional career,โ€ she says. โ€œWe 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 weโ€™re 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.

โ€œPeople were staying home, they were being good, so the COVID volume went down significantlyโ€ in May, she says. โ€œWe were feeling very hopeful.โ€

But a false sense of security led to what she calls โ€œa 180-degree turn.โ€ In July, more than 60% of the visits to Broward Healthโ€™s ER Room were COVID-19 patients, she says.

As South Florida makes headlines as a viral epicenter, Nieves reflects with chagrin on the communityโ€™s handling of the pandemic. People are resuming normal activity without wearing masks.

โ€œIt 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. โ€œWe dismissed the highly virulent, life-threatening enemy. The virus is still hereโ€”it was just waiting for us to make a mistake.โ€

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