Most workers take for granted that they'll be off on the holidays. They expect to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner on the fourth Thursday of November. They open presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day and kiss their loved ones at midnight on New Year's Eve.
That's not always the case for health care providers.
 Photos by BARRY WILLIAMS/Special |
| Fawzia Parveen, a nurse at Emory Crawford Long Hospital, checks a patient's monitor. Parveen volunteered to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year. |
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| Jackie Miller (left), a nurse at the Center for Neuroscience at Gwinnett Medical Center, looks at a chart with nurse Christine Davis. Miller will be working during the Christmas holidays. |
Hospitals don't stop because of the calendar, and neither do their workers. Patients need care every day of the year. They receive it — often with an extra helping of cheer — because nurses and caregivers know how to adapt and to celebrate holidays wherever they are.
Jeannie Lightsey, BSN, RN, works in the neuroscience intensive care unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. When she became a nurse 10 years ago, her mother switched the family's feast to the day after Thanksgiving.
"She's a caterer, so she spends the week cooking and has a huge dinner for extended family and friends when I come home," Lightsey said. "I'm single and always go home to Valdosta around the holidays."
This year, Lightsey will be working on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and will celebrate with family on the previous weekend.
"That's when I'm scheduled this year, but when I worked part time, I often worked the holidays to help out other staff. I'd rather someone with children be home that day," she said.
Sharron Campbell, RN, a nursing supervisor at Rockdale Medical Center in Conyers who has worked nights for more than 30 years, told her family long ago, "Here's the rule: This is when I'm off, and that's when we're going to celebrate."
Most hospitals use a holiday rotation system to make it fair for everyone, but nurses often swap schedules to let another nurse be with his or her small children or travel out of town.
"When I had to work Christmas Eve when the kids were little, they knew they could open their stockings when they got up, but they had to wait for mom to get home at 7:30 or 8 a.m. to open gifts," Campbell said. "I'd have all the gifts wrapped and under the tree.
"I'd prepare a breakfast strada ahead of time. I'd pop it into the oven while we opened gifts, and we'd have Christmas breakfast afterward. You learn to get things down to a science when you're a nurse."
Celebrating the holidays at hospitals can be complicated. Some years, emergency rooms are filled with patients, making hospitals more crowded than usual during the holidays. Other times, things might be quiet because doctors have been able to send patients home.
Regardless, those who are working celebrate together.
"We'll have carols playing softly, and the halls will be decorated," Campbell said. "Everyone brings in food to share. Families come with presents. One year, we all chipped in and bought presents for a man who didn't have family."
She passes out candy canes and "terrifies the staff by singing carols."
"We're in a good mood, because we know we're in this together," Campbell said. "We'd like to be home with our families, but this is the nature of the job, and we go with the flow."
It has never bothered 19-year nurse Jackie Miller to work on holidays.
"I always wanted to be a nurse, and I knew it went with the job. Besides, my father was a police officer. You just plan accordingly," said Miller, RN, CNRN, a clinician in the Center for Neuroscience at Gwinnett Medical Center.
When her three children were young, the family got up at 4 in the morning on Christmas to open presents before Miller left for work.
"On the years I was off, they'd still get up, but we'd tell them Santa hadn't come yet, and they had to go back to bed," she said with a laugh.
Miller swapped shifts with another nurse this year. She'll work on Christmas Eve during the day, celebrate with her family that evening and work on Christmas Day.
"I'm divorced, and my children will be with their father and [his family] Christmas Day. When I get off work Christmas night, my father takes us to a fabulous buffet at Château Élan," she said. "It's OK to change your traditions a bit."
It's hard to avoid a little holiday sadness when you work at a hospital.
"It makes you a little melancholy driving to work on Christmas morning, but you're mostly sad for the patients, who are there for a reason they didn't have any control over," Miller said. "You appreciate that you get to go home later."
Wanting to make Christmas a good day for everyone, the nurses in Miller's unit bring food and share a meal together. Volunteers from a nearby church bring a holiday meal for patients.
"If patients don't have family visiting, then we take them something special to eat and spend extra time with them," Miller said.
Fawzia Parveen, RN, an intensive care nurse at Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, volunteers to work on Christmas every year. She is a Muslim from Bangladesh, and her favorite holiday is the conclusion of Ramadan in October, when her family and friends gather to pray, wear new clothes, exchange gifts and feast after their fast.
"I'll work Dec. 24, 25, 26 this year so that other nurses can be home with their families or travel out of town," she said. "It's not our holiday, but my family will get together with friends after I get home from work. We all enjoy this time of year — the beautiful lights, the presents and everyone being in a festive mood."
This year, Parveen will wear Santa scrubs to work and greet patients with a hearty "Merry Christmas!"
"Even though we're working, we want to keep things light and fun throughout the day," she said. "It sure makes [patients] feel better."
Patients at Emory Crawford Long get special meals on decorated trays as well as Christmas cookies or small gifts. Volunteers from churches sing carols.
"The nurses bring in a huge spread of food," Parveen said.
By request, Parveen will bring biryani, a spicy meat and rice curry dish.
Her floor will be bustling, as families come to celebrate with loved ones.
"Last year, the wife and daughter of a young man paralyzed from the chest down brought presents and a video camera," Parveen said. "I said, 'Let me take a video of the whole family together.' I really enjoyed it. It made me happy to help them."
In her first year of nursing and newly married, Kate McGinnis, RN, BSN, a neonatal intensive care nurse at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, was pleasantly surprised to learn that she wouldn't have to work on all the holidays. She spent Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh with her family but will be at work on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
"I volunteered to work Christmas and New Year's, because I don't have any children, and others wanted to be home. I think it's going to be fun," she said. "I hear that Santa and Mrs. Claus come on Christmas morning, and this will be all our babies' first Christmas, so I think this will be a pretty exciting place to be."
McGinnis was a pre-med student in college and was accepted into medical school. But she realized that she wanted to be a nurse.
"I couldn't have found a better career. I like being with my patients and their families. They're like a second family to me," she said. "Still, if I can manage it, I'll be on the phone with my husband at midnight on New Year's Eve."