Hidden Heroes

Nurses, heroes of the pandemic, honor them as they deserve. We place our mental and physical health on the lines for our patients. We expect to be exposed to diseases every time we walk into work. Doctors, nurses’ aides, respiratory therapists, phlebotomists, lab personnel, and medical assistants are the same. But what about those people in the hospital that aren’t medical professionals? 

 Nurses don’t work alone. We may do much of the work and care for patients, but we can’t do everything. We’re surrounded by a group of support staff that make our jobs possible. They also need to be recognized during this pandemic. Information desk/screeners, admission personnel, security, nutrition staff, housekeepers, maintenance, Biomedical, and IT personnel all provide support and face the risk of exposure every day. 

Information desk personnel became the hospitals’ gatekeepers. Taking temperatures, keeping logs, and enforcing ever changing safety rules, while continuing to direct patients to the proper location is now their job. These hidden heroes man the front desks in the hospital and see every person who walks through the doors. 

Admission staff register patients for everything from ER visits to surgeries to lab work. Hidden heroes who work to ensure patients have their documentation properly completed.

Security personnel are often involved in some of the not so nice aspects of working in a hospital. They are often only called in when situations escalate beyond the control of the medical staff. Often these situations become physical, giving rise to increased risk of injury and risk of a Covid infection. 

Those working in the kitchen provide healthy meals and snacks for both patients and hospital staff. 

The housekeeping staff make sure we have clean linen, clean rooms—including disinfecting them properly based on isolation guidelines, and keep the hospital as a whole disinfected and as germ free as possible. 

Maintenance ensures the proper working of the ventilation systems—even setting up new ones as the need arises—the functioning of isolation units, keeping us warm, and fixing whatever needs to be fixed. 

Biomedical and IT services keep our medical equipment and computers up and running. Thankfully, they have a lot of patience with the medical staff who often want things fixed right away and need everything to be running correctly. 

Continue to praise the nurses and other medical staff who put their own lives at risk to keep you alive. But don’t forget those Hidden Heroes you may not see. Heroes, even the nurses need to do our jobs well.