SALT LAKE CITY: It has been a year unlike any other for most professionals, but especially for those working in health care.
For all the evil of this last year will be remembered, if nothing else, 2020 has shown us what real heroes are like.
Not movie stars, athletes or even influential social media. Instead, people who look like Mackenzie Visentin.
“One thing I’ve learned this year is the adaptability and resilience of nurses,” she said.
Visentin is a nurse manager at Alta View Hospital and is proud of how her team and all the health workers have managed a year they don’t really teach in medical school.
“My team has chosen to have a good attitude in this challenge,” Visentin said.
Sometimes having a good attitude was quite a challenge.
“There have been days when we’ve been on the last nerve, very stressed: fuses are very short,” said Breno Rodrigues, a physiotherapist at Intermountain Healthcare. “But I think in the end, we came together as caregivers, as a group of human beings who cared about other humans and it has reminded us why we have become health care providers.”
Many of them said that the love and support they received from the community has helped them.
While for a year as challenging as it has been for the medical profession, they also said they have learned a lot in 2020.
“One thing I’ve learned this year is people’s resilience and the fact that sometimes suffering can bring out the best in people,” said Cathie Randle, home supervisor at Alta View Hospital. .
“I think I’m very proud of my co-workers, from our emergency room to the nurses on the floor, everyone,” said Chris Taylor, a CT technologist. “We work hard every day to take care of our patients who are really sick.”
One thing I’ve learned this year is people’s resilience and the fact that sometimes suffering can bring out the best in people.
–Cathie Randle, Alta View Hospital
A new year, however, always brings new hopes.
“My wish for next year is to end this pandemic,” said LeAnne Blair, a nursing manager at Riverton Hospital. “To be able to see my friends again.”
“I am very hopeful that our communities will be vaccinated enough to be able to open businesses and be able to be with their families safely again and get our lives back to normal,” Randle said.
The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been politically controversial.
But as divisive as the coronavirus, masks and vaccines have been and continue to be, perhaps Jake Elkins has the best wish of all.
He works part-time at Alta View Hospital and sees a new life coming to him every day.
“I am very excited that we can all get out of this and learn and overcome our challenges in the future,” he said. “My wish for next year would probably be for us to learn to come together as a human race and to overcome our differences.”
That would be heroic for everyone.
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Alex Cabrero