Greenville nurse answers call to care for COVID patients

Brandi McAtee works at a VA hospital, taking care of the men and women who have served our nation. Like the veterans she cares for, Brandi, too, has experience serving others selflessly.

Raised in Greenville — a town of less than 500 — Brandi had focused on her family and community, and enjoyed being a nurse not far from her hometown. She hadn’t done a lot of traveling in her life.

“I’m not much for adventuring – I’m not that brave,” she says with a laugh.

Greenville nurse Brandi McAtee cares for a patient.Photo provided

That statement is debatable. For example, about five years ago, Brandi put her fears aside and stepped out of her comfort zone to go to Haiti as part of a mission trip. Staying in something akin to a military bunker, she spent her days working in a traveling clinic, providing health care services for the community, as part of a team of volunteers.

“People would walk for miles and wait for hours — never complaining or arguing with each other — just to be seen by a health care professional,” Brandi marvels. “We don’t realize how good we have it here.”

It had been her first experience on an airplane.

By early June 2020, she was about to have her second — but the plane ride was not the most courageous part of her trip.

Brandi embarked upon a volunteer assignment working at a Maryland state veterans’ home, where 31 of her 33 patients were positive for COVID-19.

A system to share resources

Shortly after Brandi started working at the John J. Pershing VA Medical Center in Poplar Bluff, a colleague told her about VA’s Disaster Emergency Medical Personnel System. It is the Veterans Health Administration’s main deployment program for clinical and non-clinical staff to an emergency or disaster for internal VA needs, or for missions following a Presidential Disaster Declaration.

Brandi thought, “Why not?” and signed up to participate. And … for nearly three years … nothing happened.

Then COVID-19 struck.

Time to go

Brandi’s home medical center was fortunate. Her long-term care ward was largely unaffected by the virus.

Others were not so lucky. As cases grew and state resources were taxed, appeals for help began to roll in at the national level.

Suddenly, Brandi’s expertise was requested elsewhere.

She got the word she would be leaving about three days before her flight was to depart.

“My mom was not happy,” Brandi says ruefully. “She was very concerned for my safety. I told her, ‘This is my passion, and my purpose – this is what I’m supposed to do.’”

She left for Maryland on June 10, bound for the Charlotte’s Hall Veterans Home.

“The whole thing was very well-organized,” says Brandi. “Our local contact made sure I had everything I needed and coordinated with the DEMPS office. My travel arrangements were made, and when I arrived, our team leader held a briefing with all of us who had come in to help, so that we knew where to go and what to do. I was ready to start work the very next day, and I was impressed at how smoothly things had gone.”

Challenging conditions

Many of the veterans’ home caregivers had contracted the disease, and the facility was dangerously short-staffed. Teams of DEMPS clinicians had been sent in on temporary assignments to help, and Brandi was with the third team to cycle through. VA employees from Marion, Illinois, Walla Walla Washington, and Washington, D.C. were part of her diverse group.

Brandi served as charge nurse during her shifts, completing patient assessments, skin audits, entering chart notes, and supervising other staff as they performed their duties.

“I worked on the Memory Care Ward,” she says with a wry chuckle. “You can imagine the challenges of caring for positive COVID patients in that unit. Nobody stayed in their own room.”

Unlike VA, the facility did not have a bar code scanning system, so identification of residents was problematic initially.

“At first we didn’t know the patients,” Brandi says, “and many of them didn’t know who they were, either. So, we had to rely on permanent staff until we got to know the veterans.”

But get to know them, they did. It wasn’t long before they built relationships with the residents that will remain with them for years to come.

“This is always more than just a job – the veterans matter to us. For example, I really enjoyed ‘Hank,’” Brandi says. “He was a very nice man. He always wanted you to come in and sit down and visit with him, and he’d say, ‘If you guys need anything, just let me know,’” she adds with a grin.

Though Brandi had traveled with the supplies she needed such as proper personal protective equipment (PPE), on a national basis, supplies were limited, and the veterans’ home felt the pinch. Staff worked to improvise while still meeting safety standards.

No Regrets

Asked if she was fearful when she accepted the assignment, Brandi says she wasn’t.

“You get the sense that you’re doing something. You’re helping. Besides – thanks to our medical center, I had everything I needed, and I never felt unsafe; I really have to commend the ones who managed this process,” she said.

Though her service in this capacity meant enduring multiple tests for COVID-19, Brandi feels like the opportunity to help was worth it.

“I’d do it again,” she says, simply.