Health care workers who volunteer for the National Disaster Management System usually respond to natural disasters that overwhelm health systems, like tornadoes and hurricanes. But unlike those regional disasters, workers returning from helping a hospital overwhelmed by COVID-19 find themselves attending to the same crisis when they return home.
One of those volunteers is Mike Leverson, an emergency room nurse who lives in Jordan. Twenty-four hours after Leverson returned from a month-long deployment to two southern states, he was back working extended hours to fight the virus at Minneapolis’ Abbott Northwestern Hospital — his home campus.
“I feel fine,” Leverson said. “I am tired, but I’m not any more tired than the rest of my co-workers are — and I’m certainly not as physically stressed as my new friends in Arizona and Texas.” Continue reading.