Clinical Experience: COVID-19 among Infants - Personal Statement Example

With the increasing infection of the global COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a widespread call to ensure that all healthcare providers are equipped with personal protective equipment to prevent their chances of contracting the virus as well as breaking the chain of transmission to other patients. This week, for instance, I was to work at the emergency department where we were the first recipient of all children and infants. One of the notable cases that drew my attention was a case of a child who had been brought to the hospital by her mother for the second time within the same day.

It was evening and my colleague had been requested to take the turn of a nurse who was retiring together with her colleagues to a mandatory quarantine after a week of rigorous involvement within the facility. It meant, therefore, that I was the only Nurse at the emergency department when D.S, a two-year-old boy was brought to the facility. The hyper-exited young mother was wailing as he yelled all manner of names calling for help to save her only son. After admission, I took the vital signs of the boy and requested the medical history of the patient.

His mother briefed me that D.S has been suffering from chest complications since he was born and he also had asthma. The vital signs of D.S were astonishing, first, he had a temperature of 37.6°C, difficulty in breathing characterized by a whistling sound, chest congestion, and frequent coughing. I requested that the child be transferred to the intensive care unit to receive the breathing aid and monitoring and management of the signs. As he was administered the attending doctor demanded a COVID-19 test as the pandemic had been common among patients with chronic infections.

The most astonishing point of it was that the COVID-19 test turned positive, creating a scare among the nurses and other staff within. A contact trace began immediately, with the mother being the first person to be isolated and taken to a mandatory quarantine within the institution. An ambulance was issued by the hospital to trace people who had attended the patient at home as a fumigation exercise began to decontaminate the facility. Within the same day, the temperature of the patient had been contained to 35.2°C. I immediately thought of the technological advancements in medicine, including telemedicine which, if implemented, will help reduce the risk of healthcare professionals contracting infectious diseases such as COVID-19 when handling patients.

Besides, what had prevented me from contacting the child was my PPE I had downed in when I assumed duty. I thought of the health practices among nurses that I had learned in class and acknowledged the essence of the personal protective equipment for the safety of health care providers. One of the practices, safety became a great revelation to my practice and duty.  Personal protective equipment is physical barriers that protect healthcare professionals against contamination by body fluids and blood that may be an essential carrier of pathogens.

According to Beam et al. (2011), pathogen carriers include body secretions and other excretions that can be contracted by direct contact with the patient of the patient's surroundings. The excretions have been pointed as the primary carrier of coronavirus.   In the fight against coronavirus, for instance, all healthcare providers in all spheres must adopt a routine of adequate protection as well as hygiene to prevent the likelihood of contracting the virus as well as infecting other patients.

Therefore, the use of personal protective equipment is essential in controlling coronavirus and other infectious infections such as Ebola (Fischer II et al., 2015).