EVERETT, Wash. — For more than a year and a half, Kristina Zeh has seen more people die from COVID-19 than she can count.
As an intensive care unit nurse at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, Zeh had been on the frontlines of the pandemic from the moment the first COVID-19 patient in the U.S. walked through their doors.
"As health care workers, we're all struggling,” said Zeh. “We're having a hard time getting through this. We're exhausted, and it doesn't need to be this way."
The new surge in COVID-19 patients has overwhelmed health care workers, many of whom are leaving the profession or moving to another area of health care.
Zeh is one of them.
Earlier this month, she made the difficult decision to leave the ICU and take another nursing job.
"I got to the point where I felt that the cost of working directly with COVID patients in the ICU was too high to be worth it,” explained Zeh. “I decided to leave because I just couldn't emotionally or mentally get through another surge of COVID. A big part of me felt like I was needed, my skillset was needed, but I also needed to take a step back and take care of myself first."
Zeh said the breaking point came as she watched more COVID-19 patients filling up the hospital, most of them were unvaccinated.
"A big reason that we're seeing that people chose not to get vaccinated is because, you know, their friend or their neighbor got COVID and they were OK if they didn't think that it was a big deal," said Zeh. "And we're seeing some patients who have no other risk factors and are fairly young, who are getting very, very sick and sometimes dying from COVID and leaving families behind and they're just being taken too soon."
Witnessing so much suffering and death took a toll, and Zeh said watching the strain unvaccinated patients are putting on the hospital system has been frustrating, especially because she believes this surge was preventable.
"Now, the patients that we're seeing in the ICU, we recognize that it's a personal choice that they made, a personal choice, and that's what brought them to us,” said Zeh. “Of course, we will do everything that we can to treat them. But it's, it seems strange to me that somebody will choose not to get vaccinated because they don't trust the medical community or science or what we're telling them. But then when they're sick in the hospital, they want every therapy that we can provide them.”
That frustration combined with the divisiveness over masks, vaccines, and lack of community support has some health care workers calling it quits.
“We see people discouraging others from getting vaccinated and wearing masks, too,” said Zeh. “And that's hard to see when you're, you see the worst of COVID every day when you go to work.”
Zeh is much happier now, but she worries about the colleagues who are still struggling. She's also concerned about the impact staffing shortages will have on patient care if there isn't relief soon for health care workers.
"Yeah, it's frustrating," said Zeh. "We feel like we've given it our all this entire year and a half, and we don't have much more that we can give."