SALT LAKE CITY – It has been a year unlike any other for most professionals, but mainly for those working in the health area.
For everything that was bad last year will be remembered, at least 2020 showed us how true heroes are.
Not movie stars, athletes or even social media influencers. Instead, people who look like Mackenzie Visentin.
“One thing I learned this year is how adaptable and resilient nurses are,” she said.
Visentin is a nurse manager at Alta View Hospital and is proud of how his team, and all healthcare professionals, have handled a year that they don’t really teach in medical school.
“My team has chosen to have a good attitude towards this challenge,” said Visentin.
Sometimes, having a good attitude was a challenge in itself.
“There were days when we were on the last nerves, very stressed – the fuses are very short,” said Breno Rodrigues, a physiotherapist at Intermountain Healthcare. “But I think that at the end of the day, we came together as caregivers, as a group of humans who cared about other humans and it reminded us of why we became health care providers.”
Many of them said that the love and support they received from the community helped.
As challenging as the year was for medical professionals, they also said they learned a lot in 2020.
“One thing I learned this year is how resilient people can be and how sometimes suffering can really reveal the best in people,” said Cathie Randle, home supervisor at Alta View Hospital.
“I think I am most proud of my co-workers, from our emergency room to our floor nurses, everyone,” said TC technologist Chris Taylor. “We work hard every day to care for our patients who are really sick.”
One thing I learned this year is how resilient people can be and how sometimes suffering can really 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 for this pandemic to end,” said LeAnne Blair, a managing nurse at Riverton Hospital. “In order to see my friends again.”
“I am very hopeful that our communities will be vaccinated enough to be able to open businesses and be able to be with their families safely again and get our lives back to normal,” said Randle.
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 everyone’s best wish.
He works in labor at Alta View Hospital and sees a new life coming into the world every day.
“I am very 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 for us to learn how to all come together as a human race and overcome our differences.”
That would be heroic for everyone.
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Alex Cabrero