ODESSA, Texas — The Medical Center Hospital has 'Thank You MCH Heroes,' written on the window of their building, thanking the workers for all they do.
"I feel like nurses and especially nurses here that work at MCH, our goal is that our patients feel that we have a lot of compassion for them and their families, we wanna take care of them and the whole family to get them better and back to the lifestyle before," says Krystle Alexander.
Their job as a nurse doesn't stop no matter what happens.
"During quarantine, there was no such thing as quarantine for us, we were still here everyday," says Jamie Carrillo, an Intensive Care Unit Nurse at MCH.
Krystle Alexander, a Director over nurses at the hospital, says as a nurse, patients always come first. However, when the pandemic hit last year, her staff also came first.
"I was telling them to know that we were prepared, there's a whole team that's working on the backend and that we heard their concerns, every week we were meeting to make sure that we were meeting those guidelines and that we're here with them. A lot of us directors, we were here taking patients because there wasn't enough nurses at the time," says Alexander.
With all the uncertainty they had to go through, these nurses came together and realized they had each other to count on.
She goes on to say, "I think we saw healthcare really kind of ban together. People that you worked with before, now you're in the trenches and you're up here long hours doing things and trying to prepare for the next day."
"We're really banned together, I saw a lot of people form bonds and support each other where we haven't seen support before," says Alexander.
Their bonds made, during a time they hadn't foreseen coming, made them even better at their job.
"Any experience going through a pandemic like that makes you a stronger nurse because you see more, you learn more, you know more and it definitely makes you a well-rounded nurse," says Carrillo.