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YO U ’ L L B E Delighted
BY THE WAY, NKY
Covington grabs jobs from Cincinnati; shelter breaks ground Julia Fair Cincinnati Enquirer USA TODAY NETWORK
Courtney Graham, St. Elizabeth's Emergency Department nurse, is inoculated with the Pfi zer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine by RN Julie Nieman at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Fort Thomas on Dec. 17. PHOTOS BY ALBERT CESARE / THE ENQUIRER
Cincinnati’s nurses feel the strain of a long pandemic Cole Behrens and Terry DeMio Cincinnati Enquirer USA TODAY NETWORK
Lee Ann Ernst, coordinator of the St. Elizabeth Infectious Disease Response Team, worked March, April, May and June on the frontlines of COVID-19 care at the Fort Thomas hospital, the epicenter of novel coronavirus pandemic care in Northern Kentucky. Now she works in the emergency room at St. E’s Edgewood, where she still sees COVID patients nearly every day. The work has been a blur. Yet she remembers in detail her encounters with patients. Like the man she cared for at the Edgewood ER: a husband, father and family provider. “The primary everything at his home,” Ernst said. “And now he is sick.” “There’s that, ‘I’ve got COVID?’ response,” Ernst said. “The absolute fright in this man’s voice. Like his whole world had been put in a blender and he was in puree.” “You’re hanging the meds, the cardiac monitor keeps beeping,” she said. The man is talking but the beeping is disruptive, she said. “And then you’re turning down the monitor so it stops beeping. At that moment, that’s not important. You just give him time to talk and just work through this.” Then there was a 100-plus-year-old survivor of the 1918 fl u pandemic who tested positive for COVID-19 in Ernst’s presence. “She smacked her thigh. She said, “Will you stop it? Are you kidding me? I’ve got the COVID!’ She laughed a little, but you could tell she understood the implication,” Ernst said. Remarkably, the woman survived. “She was adorable,” Ernst said. Ernst remembers, too, the families of her COVID-19 patients: “I legitimately feel their pain. I feel their heart. I understand what the sentence implies: ‘You can’t come in.’” And she remembers too many who died in care, when all that could be done had been done and her team could only be there for these patients and for each other. Ernst recounted this scene: “Through full PPE (personal protective equipment), the nurse called out to the intensivist that the patient was crashing.” After a fl urry of conversations among the critical care doctor and the team about what could be done, and
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Registered nurse Julie Nieman administers a Pfi zer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine to RN Sean Kathman at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Fort Thomas.
the determination that there was nothing more, the patient began to die. “The nurse asked, ‘What should I do?’ “ Ernst said. “The doctor said, ‘Take the patient’s hand,’ and she did. We all stood there and watched the monitor go fl atline and the patient stop breathing. “We cried and stood motionless in the hall.” It hasn’t all been tears for Ernst. There are victories, too, she said. “It was the days when patients went home that fueled us for the days when patients never would.” During her time at Fort Thomas, Ernst had nights she couldn’t go home and days she worked 15-hour shifts. When she did go home, she’d leave her car key in the ignition, walk inside, drop her purse on the kitchen counter, go upstairs, get in bed “and sleep like a baby.” The next morning, she’d get up, shower, grab her purse, get in her car and start again. “You get tired,” she said. “But I never want to be so tired that there isn’t at least an eff ort to address time with the patient.” “That’s a whole human being,” Ernst said. “You want them to know, we are not going to let you be totally alone. We will keep your family notifi ed. We’re going to stay with you.”
‘There’s no way to get away from it’
This is an installment of reporter Julia Fair’s series “By the way, NKY.” Here, you’ll fi nd what’s going on in Northern Kentucky. Even though The Simpsons recently featured Cincinnati in an episode, Northern Kentucky had some recent bragging rights, too. Recently, Covington grabbed some jobs that were based in Cincinnati and a new homeless shelter held its ceremonial groundbreaking. In this series, By the way, NKY – we focus on some of the news happening in the region and fi ll you in on what’s going on in your neighborhoods. If there’s something you think should be included, email reporter Julia Fair at jfair@enquirer.com By the way, here’s what’s going on in Northern Kentucky:
Cincinnati headquarters move to Covington Protective Life Corp., an insurance business, announced it will relocate from Cincinnati to Covington, according to a press release from Gov. Andy Beshear. After nearly 30 years of working in downtown Cincinnati, the company is planning to invest $17.1 million to lease 67,000 square feet in Covington’s RiverCenter. The new offi ce could open as soon as summer 2021, according to the release. It’s the latest company to move across the Ohio River. When Omnicare, a drug provider for nursing homes, and Nielsen, a marketing fi rm, moved from Covington to Cincinnati in 2011, it caused some tension between the states, according to The Enquirer archives. Then-Covington city commissioner Steve Frank called out then-Gov. John Kasich for recruiting the companies during a press conference. And, then-Gov. Steve Beshear committed to not letting that happen again. Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley’s offi ce did not respond to The Enquirer’s request for comment. In the release, company leaders said they chose the new location because of the building’s central location. It also got incentives from the Kentucky Development Finance Authority, according to the release. The 10-year incentive agreement includes up to $2.1 million in tax incentives. These are the annual targets the company needs to get the incentives: h Create and maintain 77 Kentucky-resident, full-time jobs across 10 years. h Achieve an average hourly wage target of $47.50 for the new jobs over the 10-year program life. The company may also use the Kentucky Skills Network, which provides no-cost recruitment, job placement services, reduced-cost customized training, and job training incentives, according to the release.
CJ Adams doesn’t consider herself a frontline See NURSES, Page 4A
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See NKY, Page 2A
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