Bryan Nurses Say This COVID Wave is Different With Unvaccinated Patients

Nurses at Bryan Medical Center in Lincoln say their mentally and physically exhausted as they treat the newest wave of COVID-19 patients.

Most of the nearly 70 COVID patients at Bryan Medical Center are unvaccinated and nurse Katherine Wolverton said Tuesday it’s difficult to deal with some who still deny they have COVID even while on ventilators. For some, she said, no level of reasoning is effective.

“Sometimes I’m just dumbfounded by the things that people say and their disbelief when we have the CDC, when we have the FDA approval of the vaccine and that people don’t believe it or they think it’s a conspiracy theory,” she said.

Wolverton works in the hospital’s progressive care unit and said it’s tough to watch COVID patients struggle with the disease amid all the misinformation about vaccines and the disease.

“I feel a lot of frustration when I have people denying they have COVID or saying it’s a conspiracy. I mean look, these people are dying. I’m holding them in their last breaths and I bet you they would say they wished they had gotten the vaccine,” Wolverton said.

Taylor Kadavy works in Bryan Medical Center’s Intensive Care Unit and said the pandemic has been mentally and physically exhausting for healthcare workers. She said this surge in COVID cases is different.

“I think that it was easier to empathize last time with everything being so much more preventable this time,” Kadavy said. “As all the reports have said, the majority of our patients are no vaccinated.”

Bryan Medical Center has had nearly 270 COVID deaths since the start of the pandemic. Wolverton and Kadavy are both optimistic the FDA’s full approval of the Pfizer vaccine will help convince more people to get their vaccinations.