NEW YORK CITY (AP) - Gina Willaford, Jackie Lemm and Jennifer Concepcion are suited up.
Instead of a suit with an S emblazoned on the chest, the three Lee County women are wearing their scrubs.
The three are among hundreds of nurses in a New York City hotel, where last week they waited to be deployed to hospitals in the area to help combat COVID-19.
The three women arrived April 5 in New York City - 48 hours after they decided to travel there - to try to provide care to one of the regions in the country most affected by the disease spread by the novel coronavirus.
New York City has recorded 87,725 cases, according to its health department. As of Friday (April 10), the city reported 5,820 deaths.
On a recent morning, the three were awake for a 5:45 a.m. briefing, ready for what the day would bring.
“We want to be out there,” Willaford, 52, said. “We are ready to go.”
Willaford and Lemm, both certified registered nurse anesthetists, and Concepcion, a registered nurse, work at Associates in Digestive Health in Fort Myers. Their employer has given the three permission to travel to New York City. When they return to Lee County, they are required to quarantine for 14 days to make sure they are healthy, Willaford said.
Willaford said she began looking for companies that were bringing nurses to New York City. She chose one that focused on critical care and crucial staffers. The company expedited the paperwork to get the nurses credentialed in New York state and during the first few days they waited to be brought on board.
Their stint in New York City is supposed to last 21 days. Willaford and Conception are assigned to Bellevue Hospital while Lemm is working in Kings County Hospital Center. The nurses declined to name the company they are working for.
“New York City is doing all of the hard work for the country,” Willaford said. “I feel like it’s my responsibility to come up here and see what’s working and what’s not working.”
Florida’s statewide case count on Friday was at 17,531 cases, with Lee County’s total at 547. Fourteen people have died in Lee County.
Willaford, of Cape Coral, said she used to work across ICUs in Lee County and has been sending back best practices to healthcare workers she knows.
“Everybody in the country needs to be aware of not trying to reinvent the wheel but seeing what works in the epicenter,” Willaford said. “Our responsibility as healthcare workers is to be here not only to learn, but to take that back to Lee County and be ready.”
When Willaford decided to head to New York City last week she shared her plans with Lemm and Concepcion, and they quickly agreed to join her.
“We all decided to come here together and support each other,” Lemm, 40, said. “I honestly feel that to come and do something like this, to have friends with you and moral support is very important.”
The three of them will serve as a buddy system and help each other handle the growing death toll in New York City, she said.
“As nurses and healthcare providers we just have the urge to help others and that’s just what we do,” Lemm said. “We know that the majority of patients in the hospital here are positive for the coronavirus. It does make us nervous, but we’ve been guaranteed by our agency we’ll have the proper protective gear, and we are just taking that leap of faith.”
Willaford said she might extend her contract to travel to the next hot spot, but Lemm said after this tour of duty, she has to return to Lee County.
Families of the nurses were worried for them when they declared their need to help, but since their arrival in New York City, attitudes have changed.
“I have a 19-year-old son who is amazing,” Willaford said. “He was really scared to begin with. But I am telling you, once I landed up here, he is very proud of me.”
Lemm’s father has been cheering his daughter from afar.
“It was a bittersweet kind of thing when she told me she was going,” said Scott Brown, Lemm’s father. “It’s like sending your son into a war zone. You are proud to have them serve the country.”
Lee Health, the region’s largest healthcare provider, doesn’t have a program to deploy nurses to New York City, but some nurses may have decided to go on their own, said Jonathon Little, communications supervisor for Lee Health.
While Willaford, Lemm and Conception have been given the blessings of their employer to travel to New York City, Willaford said that isn’t the case for all of the nurses that have volunteered to work in New York City.
“A lot of healthcare workers are hesitant to come because they are scared of losing their positions at home,” Willaford said. “We started talking to other nurses and they actually quit their jobs to come here.”
The nurses are staying in a hotel in the Times Square with more than 600 other nurses waiting to join the battle. Each nurse has their own room to maintain social distancing guidelines. From Willaford’s hotel window, she can see the military and homeless people in Times Square.
“It’s not the New York City people are used to,” Lemm said.
Times Square is empty. The advertising billboards have been turned into screens bearing messages of support for healthcare workers.
People who have seen them wearing their scrubs thank the nurses for coming to New York City.
“When I first took it into consideration I will say there was some fear,” Lemm said.
Considering it’s a pandemic like few have seen in their lifetime, fear is present, she added.
“Considering how contagious this disease is I would say it is very scary,” Lemm said. “The fact we had the opportunity to use our skills to help people in need - that superseded the fear.
“There are healthcare workers that are getting sick and that have been sick - I think that all of us who are here do have that in our heads.”
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