News Detail
Inside a Covid-19 Hot Zone: Dina Clay '06
From the Fall 2020 EHS Magazine
Though it was springtime in New York City, with days of warm sunshine soon to chase away winter’s bleakness, Dina Clay ’06 woke up one morning with a feeling of dread. She did not want to go to her job as a nurse at the historic Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side. She had become a nurse just a year earlier, moved by the death of her grandfather, a doctor, to take up medicine after stints in advertising and web development. Now, she was working on a Covid-19 unit, experiencing the exhaustion of fighting a pandemic that even top scientists and world leaders struggled to understand.
Though it was springtime in New York City, with days of warm sunshine soon to chase away winter’s bleakness, Dina Clay ’06 woke up one morning with a feeling of dread. She did not want to go to her job as a nurse at the historic Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side. She had become a nurse just a year earlier, moved by the death of her grandfather, a doctor, to take up medicine after stints in advertising and web development. Now, she was working on a Covid-19 unit, experiencing the exhaustion of fighting a pandemic that even top scientists and world leaders struggled to understand.
She eventually made it out of bed, and when she arrived at the hospital, she found cleaning crews on her floor. After weeks of anxiety and uncertainty, she let herself breathe a sigh of relief. The crews could only mean one thing: Her floor was returning to normal — at least for now.
Three weeks earlier, when New York City was the global epicenter of the coronavirus, Clay’s specialty abdominal transplant unit had been transformed into a Covid-19 unit, its usual patients moved to another floor. With no particular Covid-19 training, Clay had thrown herself into the work of a front-line responder. “When you go into nursing, you don’t think, ‘Oh yes, I’m ready for a pandemic,’” she jokes.
Her nursing team was split, with older, more experienced nurses staying with transplant patients and younger nurses like Clay assigned to the Covid-19 cases. Clay initially considered herself lucky. She was still working with some of her fellow nurses, and she found comfort in the routines of her floor — the location of medicines, the code to the supply room. Also, she was relatively well stocked with personal protective equipment (PPE), including a fresh N95 mask daily — not enough to switch out after every patient, per protocol, but certainly more than other medical personnel in the city had. Still, she made sure to put her mask aside every night, just in case there wasn’t a new one available the next day.
Despite the risks and the unknowns, Clay did not fear for her life. “I’m not wired that way,” she explains. “This is the profession I chose, and while I deserve to be protected with PPE, I didn’t worry about it too much.”
Over time, however, the days on the unit began to wear on her. A wave of new doctors, providers, and physician’s assistants arrived on her floor as relief workers, some of them medical students who had graduated early from state schools. To limit doctors’ exposure to the virus, nurses were asked to interact more with patients. Though Clay volunteered to check on her patients frequently, the stress mounted.
She also struggled with the volatility and unpredictability of Covid-19. Clay was accustomed to working with critically ill transplant patients, but there were signs when their health worsened, and she typically had time to react and adapt. Patients with Covid-19 can devolve in a matter of minutes, often with little warning. It was stressful to be on alert at every moment, to know that patients could flip and die in a matter of seconds. “You were never going to be able to prepare for that,” Clay says.
Sometime that spring, New Yorkers began a nightly ritual to salute the city’s health-care workers, an organic expression of gratitude born of social media. Gathered on streets, apartment balconies, and rooftops, they cheered, clapped, banged pots and pans, and played music. Clay was too busy inside the hospital to hear what was happening outside, but one evening, her manager forced the floor’s nurses to greet a crowd gathered outside Mt. Sinai, including firefighters, their truck horns blaring and lights blazing.
After a particularly rough week, Clay one night took a jog that happened to coincide with the 7 p.m. salute. She let herself appreciate it for a moment. She says she has never felt recognized like that; nursing can be a thankless job, but New Yorkers were suddenly pouring out their thanks.
Today, the number of Covid-19 cases are rising again, nationally and in New York. Clay remains with her transplant patients for now. Months after her work on the Covid-19 unit, she reflects on the experience. Though so much in the world at the time felt hopeless, she says her role as a front-line worker gave her a powerful sense of purpose. “When Covid hit, I was very thankful that I could actually be doing something and making a difference. I felt like I was actively helping.”
