SALT LAKE CITY – It was a different year than any other for most professionals, but especially for those who work in health care.
For all the evil of the last year, we will remember, if nothing else, 2020 showed us what real heroes look like.
Not movie stars, athletes or even social media influencers. Instead, people who look like Mackenzie Visentin.
“One thing I’ve learned this year is how adaptable and resilient nurses are,” she said.
Visentin is a nurse at Alta View Hospital and is proud of the way her team and all the health workers have managed a year they don’t teach much in medical school.
“My team chose to have a good attitude through this challenge,” Visentin said.
Sometimes having a good attitude was a challenge in itself.
“There were days when we were on our last nerve, very stressed – the safety is very short,” said Breno Rodrigues, a physical therapist at Intermountain Healthcare. “But I think at the end of the day, we got together as caregivers, as a group of people who care about other people and reminded us why we became health care providers.”
Many of them said that the love and support they received from the community helped.
For a year as challenging as it was for those in the medical profession, however, they said they learned a lot in 2020.
“One thing I’ve learned this year is how resilient people can be and how sometimes suffering can bring out the best in people,” said Cathie Randle, a supervisor at Alta View Hospital.
“I think I’m the proudest of my colleagues, from the emergency room to the nurses upstairs, everyone,” said CT technologist Chris Taylor. “We work hard every day to take care of our patients who are really sick.”
One thing we have learned this year is how resilient people can be and how sometimes suffering can bring out the best in people.
–Cathie Randle, Alta View Hospital
A new year, however, always brings new hope.
“My wish for next year is to get over this pandemic,” said LeAnne Blair, a nurse at Riverton Hospital. “To be able to see my friends again.”
“I am most hopeful that our communities will be vaccinated enough to be able to start businesses and be safe with their families again and for our lives to return to normal,” Randle said.
The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been politically controversial.
But as divisive as the coronavirus, masks and vaccines have been and continue to be, perhaps Jake Elkins has the best of all.
She works at work and at birth at Alta View Hospital and sees a new life coming into this world every day.
“I am most hopeful that we can all get out of this and learn and overcome our challenges in the future,” he said. “My wish for next year would probably be to learn how to unite as a human race and overcome our differences.”
It would be heroic for everyone.
Related links
Related stories
Alex Cabrero