Nursing grad helping at COVID-19 hotspot in NYC
WEST LIBERTY, W.Va. – A Wheeling woman who works in Washington volunteered to travel to New York City at the height of the pandemic to work in the intensive care unit at NYU Winthrop, a 591-bed facility in Long Island.
“Honestly, going to New York just felt like the right thing to do. I didn’t have any reason not to go,” said MacKenzie Davis, who is nurse with the flight company, Aero National, which flies out of Washington. “I’m healthy, young, and have the necessary experience and education to make a difference in the best way I know how.”
The hospital she’s now working at is one of six hospitals on Long Island considered coronavirus hot spots with some of the greatest totals of COVID-19 patient hospitalizations in the New York Metro area, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Long Island Press.
“I thought about my hardest days as a critical care nurse and wanted to offer some relief to my fellow health care professionals during what must be some of their darkest days,” added the 2017 graduate of West Liberty University’s nursing program.
Her NYC assignment is for eight weeks.
“MacKenzie is doing well in New York and likes to be challenged,” said her mother, Wendy Cook, who works as a nurse manager at Wheeling Hospital in Labor and Delivery.
“My daughter didn’t go with a group; she reached out to the hospitals in New York on her own and found a place to work by herself,” Cook said.
MacKenzie wanted to take her two dogs along to New York for companionship and is renting a house on Long Island since she needed space and consideration for pets. The house she found was for sale, but the pandemic changed that and it was taken off the market for now.
“As a mom, I tried to talk her out of going to New York. But I’m incredibly proud of the person she is and her wanting to make a difference. Even when I was young, I don’t know if I would have stepped up to such a challenge. So my initial fear has now turned to pride,” Cook said.
“It’s a humbling experience when your child becomes your hero,” Cook said.