Black Frontline Workers: Interview With Ashley Dornan
By:Sincere Joseph McKnight
On May 6th 2020 Sincere Joseph McKnight from the DDB podcast group interviewed Ashley McQueen who is an RN (Registered Nurse). In this interview she speaks about how COVID-19 has affected her working life, and some of the new things that she has to do in her job as a nurse during this pandemic.
“I'm Ashley McQueen. I am an RN, Registered Nurse at Vancouver General. I work on a surgical floor and we specialize in vascular and HPB surgery.”
She first starts off with a brief description about her job as a nurse and on what HPB stands for.
“We don't actually do the surgeries on my floor, we take care of people before and after. So people will come in, we'll get them prepped for surgery, we'll make sure they're healthy and ready to rock. And then we send them down to the operating room, and then when they come back, we take care of them after surgery and until they're ready to go back home. So it's kind of a lot of the before and after surgery, not the actual surgery part.”
I asked her more about her job and she goes on to say,
On May 6th 2020 Sincere Joseph McKnight from the DDB podcast group interviewed Ashley McQueen who is an RN (Registered Nurse). In this interview she speaks about how COVID-19 has affected her working life, and some of the new things that she has to do in her job as a nurse during this pandemic.
“I'm Ashley McQueen. I am an RN, Registered Nurse at Vancouver General. I work on a surgical floor and we specialize in vascular and HPB surgery.”
She first starts off with a brief description about her job as a nurse and on what HPB stands for.
“We don't actually do the surgeries on my floor, we take care of people before and after. So people will come in, we'll get them prepped for surgery, we'll make sure they're healthy and ready to rock. And then we send them down to the operating room, and then when they come back, we take care of them after surgery and until they're ready to go back home. So it's kind of a lot of the before and after surgery, not the actual surgery part.”
I asked her more about her job and she goes on to say,
“People get sick after surgery, especially large surgeries. They have wounds or infections, or maybe they get some sort of complication, and we often help them with that or sometimes they’ll heal super well and we send them on their way within a couple days. And it all kind of depends. Vascular surgery is surgery on the blood vessels and HPB surgeries are surgeries that have to do with the liver, pancreas and bile ducts.”
I asked her about why she wanted to become a nurse and what made her become the worker that she is today.
“I knew that I wanted to work in healthcare. I think like for quite some time I wanted to sort of help people. I also was in the hospital with a sick mother for quite a long time and I got to know the nurses very well. She was in the hospital for about six months so that definitely influenced my decision making and we also have a family friend who is a nurse and she's a really amazing role model for me as well. So there were a few things that kind of led me in that direction and it's been really great so far.”
She went on to tell me the difference between how COVID made her job both easier and harder and if there any similarity between before working during COVID-19 and after.
“The first month or so, at least the first few weeks to a month, was pretty stressful like in general, because we just didn't really know what the influx of people were going to be. And they were setting up the hospital kind of preparing for the worst and hoping for the best and information was coming in so rapidly and changing so quickly that it was hard to kind of feel like we were in control of the situation. In terms of the day-to-day what's changed: we wear PPE. So we're always wearing masks, goggles, a face shield, gowns and a scrub cap, just for our protection. And then in terms of patient load, our census went from 103% to capacity, which is what we're normally at, it went down to, I think the lowest it was at was like 40 or 50%. And that was just in the first week. And then as COVID numbers kind of remained on the lower end of the spectrum, we started taking on more and more surgery. So I think we are back up to like 80% or 90% capacity. And so in terms of surgery, we canceled on non-emergency surgery, so only people who really needed the surgeries were coming in, just to kind of keep the number of people in the hospital down. And now they're starting to look at kind of opening back up some non-essential surgeries, non-emergent surgeries. And just because we seemed to have kept kind of the numbers for COVID down low enough that we have enough room if anything, were to sort of happen.”
I then talk to her about how she was feeling about how COVID affected her.
“I definitely had a couple sort of hard, stressful weeks, just because every time we came in to the hospital, there was like a different protocol plays or a different rationale for why we're doing things or a different order of operations, PPE shortages, whether we were going to become a COVID unit or not. So in terms of that, I think it was just stressful because there were no clear answers, like everyone, even Dr. Bonnie Henry, said some of this stuff is stuff we've never seen before. So, in terms of that, it was a little unsettling. In terms of just my stress levels, I think as we realized we had a little bit better of a hold on the outbreaks than maybe we originally anticipated the stress sort of eased a little bit. I will say, it's actually kind of nice. Like, I do feel sort of lucky that I still get to go to work because it’s basic human interaction and something that people who are working from home don't get to have. My partner is a firefighter, and I know for him he's very social and if he couldn't go to work I think that he would be kind of bouncing off the walls! I feel lucky in the sense that I get to go to work still and that it's not a really dangerous place for me to be at this time.”
I had a wonderful time talking to Ashley about her job and what she does. It’s just amazing to see how hard-working black frontline workers are especially valuable during times like this.
