On the SARS frontline

Nurse Zhou Jin volunteered to work with infected patients when the epidemic hit Beijing. She tells Xu Lin it was a terrifying yet rewarding experience.

Editor's Note: Ten years ago, the world was hit by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic. Thousands lost their lives, including medical workers all over the world who selflessly looked after patients in spite of the high risks of infection. The effects of the dreaded virus still reverberate to this day. In a series of reports, China Daily highlights the human faces behind the news.

Zhou Jin still thinks about how patients must have felt under the glare of the medical lamp, looking at her through her goggles and seeing her clad from head-to-toe in protective clothing.

"They must have felt helpless under someone dressed like that," says the 40-year-old head nurse at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital's cardiac surgery department. She worked as a nurse at the ICU treating SARS patients during the 2003 epidemic.

Many nurses who worked with SARS patients still live in the shadow of the disease.

"But SARS offered a precious experience that helped us improve ourselves, and we have to return to everyday life and work," Zhou says.

"If you can't, it's because you're stuck in the past."

Beijing was ravaged by SARS in May 2003. In response to the crisis, the government called for experienced medical workers to join a SARS rescue team at Beijing Geriatric Hospital. The hospital later exclusively treated SARS patients.

This was before the unfamiliar virus was controlled. Many hospital employees were infected. Zhou joined the team.

"I was fully aware of the risks," she recalls.

"But there was no retreat from such a serious task. I had a choice - I could shed my white gown and my job or I could march on."

She told her parents a half-truth - that she had an emergency health protection task - and gave them the password to her bank account, in case they needed money if she didn't survive.

"I didn't think much about it," Zhou says.

"I was just performing my duty as a nurse."

Zhou and her colleagues returned to the China-Japan Friendship Hospital after several days of training, as the hospital became a designated treatment place for SARS patients. The nurse says working close to the danger at Beijing Geriatric was a testing ground that helped her face the epidemic at the next hospital.

Zhou and her ICU colleagues cut their hair short for ease of showering, which they would do three times a day.

They were divided into two teams that would rest for two weeks and work for three. Zhou returned twice.

The ICU was divided into three zones - the disinfecting areas, where they changed clothes; the semi-disinfected areas, where they prepared infusions; and the infected area, where patients stayed.

In the infected area, Zhou wore three sets of protective clothing, two pairs of gloves, two gauze masks, goggles and headgear.

"It was hard to breathe in such heavy equipment," she recalls.

"It was a lot to put on and take off."

Nurses were crucial during the SARS epidemic.

They administered treatments and infusions.

"It was hard to find patients' veins through the fog of the goggles," she recalls.

But her experience guided her when she couldn't see well, she says.

Zhou believes she probably injected more patients than other nurses.

She once took 40 minutes to find the vein of a man using a respirator.

The nurse comforted the frightened patient.

"The longer you stayed, the greater the danger you faced," she says.

"You had to hit the nail on the head the first time."

Zhou recalls when one patient's respirator suddenly failed. "My heart jumped into my throat," she says.

She told other nurses to get a doctor and used a primitive respirator - a rubber air bladder that she squeezed - for 20 minutes.

"When I left the infected area that day, I was exhausted, soaked with sweat and trembling," she recalls.

She didn't sleep that night.

All nurses faced great pressure. Many poured their feelings into diaries. One broke into sobs during a meal. "We comforted one another, as therapy wasn't common then," Zhou says.

"The experience helped me realize I can be calm in the face of adversity. I witnessed patients' will to live and their fear of death."

Zhou became a nurse in 1990. Her parents encouraged her to pursue the career because it seemed stable.

It was anything but during the SARS epidemic. Many of her colleagues resigned.

"I couldn't turn away from the patients flooding our hospital," she says.

"My parents were intellectuals, who taught me morality."

She won a national outstanding youth award for her work during that time.

Zhou believes the award was down to luck.

"Many nurses did the same thing," she says.

"They also deserve recognition."

She became deputy head nurse of the department in 2004 and head nurse in 2008.

She still prepares injections and trains new nurses.

"Nurses have a lower social status than doctors, but they quietly devoted themselves during the SARS epidemic," she says.

"They spend a lot of face-to-face time with patients, despite high infection risks. I hope the public will give the profession greater respect."

Contact the writer at xulin@chinadaily.com.cn.