By Andi Clements Ally Freeman, who’s pursuing her doctorate in physical therapy at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, used to spend about nine hours a week getting hands-on experience in a classroom or a lab. That was before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted daily life around the globe as governments and private businesses try…
Ten percent of the people known to have been infected with COVID-19 in Georgia are health care workers, state figures show. The Public Health data, as of midday Thursday, show that of the 2,600 infected health care personnel in the state, 81 percent are female. Half are African-American. Workplace exposure to COVID-19 patients is a…
A new survey of Georgia nurses has found that four in 10 don’t feel safe or equipped to perform their duties amid the pandemic. The percentage of nurses feeling unsafe is lower than the roughly 70 percent who felt that way in a previous Georgia Nurses Association survey, taken in March. Still, it’s a disturbing…
By Andy Miller and Judi Kanne Shannon Whitten has worked as a rural nurse practitioner for 20 years in Sandersville, in eastern Georgia. She’s an advanced practice registered nurse, also known as an APRN. Some of her colleagues at the same level have been recruited by New York to help out during the city’s COVID-19…
By Madeline Laguaite and Jillian Tracy When Holly Maxwell was about 10, her mother began teaching her how to sew. It was a skill that proved useful for Maxwell’s relatives. Her mother sewed for the family, and her paternal grandmother made dresses for various women in Buford, where Maxwell grew up. She recalls how as a…
Despite communities donating it, state efforts to procure it, corporations scrambling to produce it, and new ways to disinfect it, personal protective equipment remains in short supply. “PPE continues to be a struggle for us,’’ Homer Bryson, director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, told reporters Monday. Take the case of a…
The metro Atlanta nurse who died last week of COVID-19 worked at Piedmont Henry Hospital, two employees of the suburban facility said. The employees, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation, said the RN who died of coronavirus worked with cardiac patients. One of the employees, also a nurse, said she believed the RN…
A metro Atlanta hospital nurse has died from coronavirus, GHN has learned. The Georgia Nurses Association on Friday confirmed a death of an RN, but did not identify the hospital, and did not have any personal information about the identity of the nurse. The person would be the first Georgia nurse “we know of who…
Seven in 10 Georgia nurses responding to a survey say they don’t feel safe and equipped to perform their duties as their facilities deal with COVID-19. The biggest need? Overwhelmingly, it’s personal protective equipment (PPE), the medical gear used to prevent the spread of infection. The more than 200 nurses responding to the Georgia Nursing…
Brenda Ulmer, a longtime operating room nurse, was walking to her car after one of her shifts when she suddenly realized she didn’t feel well. “My chest felt tight, my throat hurt, my nose was burning,” recalls Ulmer, who lives in the Atlanta suburb of Snellville. She was feeling sick to her stomach, too. “I remember…