I conducted an interview with my grandma, Deborah Trent, to see how covid affected her nursing career. I focused on nursing during the covid pandemic and how the nursing profession has altered as part of my oral history project. Deborah Trent, my grandma, who was a nurse during the COVID-19 pandemic, will be the subject of an interview. On January 2, 1962, my grandma was born in Goochland, Virginia; she was born in a jail and then placed in foster care. She grew up in Roanoke, Virginia, and attended Cave Spring High School before graduating. She obtained a nursing degree after graduating.After getting married to her high school sweetheart, my grandmother began working at at Roanoke Valley Psychiatric Center, Lewis Gale Hospital, Physicians to Women, and analyzing medical records at Blue Cross Blue Shield. She worked at Lewis Gale Hospital, where both of her kids were born. Following that, she started working in hospice care for elderly patients, where she remained employed during the Covid epidemic. 

I also watched many other social change interviews before conducting this interview to see different viewpoints and how other nurses got through the covid pandemic and their stories were very similar.

 

Faith Trent- Hello, my name is Faith Trent and today I’m doing an oral history interview for history 150 about the effects COVID had on nursing, and I’m interviewing my grandma Deborah Trent. So for the first question, are actually can you provide a little? Like, I don’t know, your background first, just where you’re born everything. What got you into nursing?

Deborah Trent- My name is Deborah Trent and I am the grandparent of faith, Trent. Ma. I was born and Goshen, Virginia. I reside in Virginia at this time, and I’ve lived in Roanoke, Virginia, and I’ve worked in the surrounding area. I started out in nursing, when I was in my 20s, because I had a great compassion for the elderly. The most nursing, that I do is with geriatric patients and hospice patients, I feel like that those patients are my passion, so that I can give them the most quality life that they deserve. Especially with the elderly, generation, they are the backbone of our country. And I feel like that they deserve the best care that can be given to them. And then as far as the hospice care that I’ve done, these patients are at the end days of their life, and I feel like that I can give them the best life that I can give them towards the end of their life.

Faith Trent- Okay, so we’re going to start off with some questions. The first one is, can you explain what made you want to join the nursing profession?

Deborah Trent-I want to join the nursing profession because I have a love of people.

Faith Trent- Okay. The second question is how did COVID affect your nursing career?

Deborah Trent- COVID affect the nursing career, my Well, my nursing career, and it was a great impact for the very reason that a lot of the nursing homes shut down. And, of course, I do work was working with geriatric patients. So a lot of the parents have, actually, a lot of the kids or adult kids took their parents out of nursing home because they didn’t want to locked up where they couldn’t see them. So they took them home. So I do home health. And same thing with the hospice care, that was the one, they locked down the facilities. So people want to be able to see their loved ones, especially in the last stages of their life. So I provided care for these people. And it became overwhelming because I had more patients than I did days of the week to provide the care. There was a shortage of nursing staff. There was a lot of sick really sick people. So it really impacted the nursing profession greatly.

Faith Trent- Okay, the third question is, can you explain the changes made in hospice during the COVID 19 pandemic.

Deborah Trent-The changes came in hospice used to be considered people at the end stage of their life. Now hospice has changed to where its care that’s given in all stages of illnesses and health issues for patients, where we have access to the physicians where the patients don’t have to leave their home with virtual calls. We do a lot of assessments, let the doctors know what we see in the doctors make decisions on what kind of medications and what kind of care that they need to provide for the patients because because of COVID, you know, the offices were closed.

Faith Trent- Okay, um, in what ways has COVID-19 affected the relationship with your patients, if at all.

Deborah Trent-It has affected my relationship with my patients because in one way is that we came very much more close because we had much more contact with our patients and spent a lot more time with the patients and did a lot more evaluations of the patients for the physicians due to the fact of the facility is not wanting to bring the elderly and the severely ill patients into the office due to being come in contact with other people that may have come, you know, have COVID

Faith Trent- Yeah. Okay, the next question is, how have you treated someone with COVID? Was it difficult? Like, has one of your patients had COVID?

Deborah Trent- Yes, I have had a patient that had COVID. It was not a severe case, it was towards the end of COVID, where there’s no more than a lot of people had started getting antibodies in their body. That wasn’t the strand, it was the variant strand. So my patient did not have a severe case of COVID. They just had the body aches, headaches, cough, congestion. So we had to give them steroids and breathing treatments, and basically just a severe cold.

Faith Trent-Okay, can you explain the precautions you took to prevent giving your patients COVID?

Deborah Trent- One is I limited myself in contact with outside people wiped everything down, wash my hands, too. They were so dry and cracked, wore mask, change clothes between patients. That’s about it just made sure that the cleanliness and changing clothes and so I wasn’t carrying one. Anything from patient to patient?

Faith Trent- Okay. How did you feel when things started to change due to COVID?

Deborah Trent- Well, it was, it was quite depressing, really. Because seeing people not having contact with being able to have contact families not being able to gather children not being able to go to schools, businesses shutting down. So it was really made me sad to see that a disease basically shut our country down. And really shut people down as far as families being able to have close contact with each other and have family gatherings. You know, the law had said you couldn’t have more than so many people in your home at one time. And it was really sad because it kind of put a gap in between the personal relationships and families.

Faith Trent- was there a time you were discriminated against based on gender in the medical profession? And can you describe that for the sake of the interview?

Deborah Trent- No, I don’t believe that I’ve ever been discriminated against everyone that I have worked for. has treated me equally. I am a private duty hospice nurse and geriatric nurse. So it’s not like working in the facilities and in the public places.

Faith Trent-Didn’t you used to work in public places?

Deborah Trent-I have worked in public places and I don’t feel like that I’ve ever been discriminated against.

Faith Trent-Okay. Can you explain the reasoning from switching the type of nursing you wanted to pursue throughout your career?

Deborah Trent-Well, my like I said, my passion has always been with geriatric patients and hospice patients. So really haven’t changed from that. You know, if there was a need and other departments when I was in facilities I did. I would fill in those and go wherever I was needed, but I’ve never really changed my direction where I want to provide care.

Faith Trent- Okay, and lastly, can you explain the toughest thing that has happened throughout your career in nursing? The thing that just really affected you the most?

Deborah Trent-The thing that affected me the most was Darren COVID. I lost my daughter during COVID and she was hospitalized and I wasn’t able to even be in a nursery wasn’t able to go into the facility to see her and her last days. So that was one of the hardest things in my nursing career that I’ve encountered.

Faith Trent- Okay. Thank you.