Working on a Hospital Floor

As told to Shoshana Gross

Three hours. Three long hours of performing lifesaving interventions for my patient with sweat pouring down my back, arms trembling, my snood soaked with perspiration. Three hours of us on the resuscitation team struggling to keep the patient alive, waiting for the cardiac team to finally materialize from another emergency: one of us starting an IV line, another administering drugs, a third and fourth trading off chest compressions — all while I worked at airway maintenance, making sure that the intubated man was able to breathe as I manually inflated and deflated a handheld resuscitator.

Three hours of crouching over the bed, all of us doggedly continuing with sheer stubbornness until the patient was transported. My arms were screaming in pain, I was speckled with blood, and I felt like someone had beaten me with a hammer, but none of that mattered.

When you’re working in the healthcare system, at a certain point, it doesn’t make a difference who the person in front of you is. It doesn’t make a difference if they’re wearing a yarmulke or not. The point is that they’re a person, and you want to help them.

And that’s the reality for so many of us in healthcare. We work long, grueling shifts, often under impossible conditions, and every single person is trying their best.