PA College Magazine - Winter 2021 - 11

PA COLLEGE / FEATURE

B

etween them, Janet Eisenhour
'12, BSN, RN, CCM, and
Deborah Heisey '83, MSN, RN,
ACM-RN, have 70-plus years of
nursing experience with Penn Medicine
Lancaster General Health. They are
both seasoned bedside nurses who are
now community case managers with
LG Health's Post-Acute Continuum/
Preferred Provider Network, and each
lauds the rewards of a long career.
But it took one shift at an assisted
living facility in the middle of the
COVID-19 outbreak to truly have
what Eisenhour calls their " Florence
Nightingale moment. "
When Heisey's phone rang around
dinnertime on August 19, she had just
come home from visiting sites for her
new duties as a part of a seven-member
team for Lancaster County's Regional

Response Health Collaborative
Program (RRHCP), which is funded
through a state grant to provide
COVID-19 care and prevention at
the county's 89-plus long-term care
facilities.

committed to doing whatever was
needed. " I was speechless after Kay
described the unthinkable, " Heisey
recalls. She said " yes " with one caveat.
" Nurses think better in teams, and I
asked if Janet could go with me. "

On the phone was Kay Nichols-Wolfe,
the program's team leader, with urgent
news. A nursing home two hours away
was in crisis. Nearly all its staff had
COVID-19. More than half of the 116
residents were ill with COVID-19, and
several had died.

" You get into nursing to care for people,
and this was a huge opportunity
to learn from the pandemic and help
others, " says Eisenhour, who also had
just finished a shift when Heisey called
her. " I am a twin and know that it's
easier to do something hard with
another person. "

The facility urgently needed an RN to
staff the building for that night's shift.
Without staffing, the state would have
to emergently close the facility and
evacuate the residents. Nichols-Wolfe
asked if Heisey was willing to step in.
Actual staffing wasn't part of the
team's scope, but the team was

Soon, they were driving to the facility
with a car full of personal protective
equipment.
" When we arrived, it looked like a war
zone, " Heisey recalls. " One patient was in
the process of dying when we got there,
and another was clearly struggling. "

PA College / Winter 2021

11
PA College Magazine - Winter 2021

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