Atlanta registered nurse wants to thank Atlanta for its overwhelming support
ATLANTA - You hear stories of community members donating food or showing support to healthcare workers on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic. But now, we’re hearing how healthcare workers are reacting.
Jamika King is a registered nurse at the Labor and Delivery Unit at Northside Hospital. “I just feel our community is doing so good in using this time to come together,” she says.
King is feeling that support first-hand. “We don’t even have to pack lunch anymore. Every single day we come to work, we have food donations from anonymous people. I just need to say thank you to our community.”
She says there are even days when the ER gets a surplus of food, so her unit gets the extra food from them.
Residents aren’t just donating food; they’re showing support with artwork too. “I’m so emotionally impacted every day. We have this breezeway where we walk into the hospital and it has signs and creations from people, from baseball teams to sororities, to different groups encouraging us,” says King.
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This overwhelming show of support from the community is the reason King has one important message: “I just know that the Atlanta community supports us and I just want to tell you, thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
The support started early on during the pandemic. King says, “at the beginning, it was like a trickle. But not, it’s just a surplus of blessings we’ve seen from our community.”
It’s the kind of love essential workers are longing for, even though they would never ask for it. King says, “it keeps us going, even in the hardest times, it keeps us moving.”
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The pandemic is bringing a new challenge for healthcare workers, but King says, “we are nurses and this is what we do. We sacrifice, and we love the sacrifice that we make.” She goes on to say, “this is just what we do. Yes, there is stress and anxiety, but that’s because we work in a high demand job, but I don’t think anyone is deterred.”
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“A lot of people have conspiracy theories, but I just think that this is a very serious pandemic that we’re going through,” explains King. She says she believes the precautions people are talking now to stay safe, should be used for a long time after we get the green light to “get back to normal.”
And until that moment comes, King says, “it just makes me so happy to know that the community I serve wants to serve me back.”