Nurse Fatima Shell-Sanchez: An “Angel” Who Uses Education to Protect Patients and Families

Across New York, coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are dramatically lower now than they were only weeks ago, during the region’s peak. The state is embarking on a phased opening, and summer is beckoning people outside. But COVID-19 remains a clear and present threat, making careful preventive measures as important as ever, especially for vulnerable populations and people living in crowded conditions.

VNSNY Home Care Nurse Fatima Shell-Sanchez has been caring for Bronx patients with and without COVID-19 throughout the crisis. These days she is actually ramping up her message on vigilance and commitment to patient education, because she knows that social distancing can be a real challenge—especially on a sunny afternoon—and that protocol updates can be confusing, particularly when there are language barriers.

“In these neighborhoods, people know the disease is out there,” says Fatima. “They call it the 19—but they say, ‘I hear it’s dying down. They’re opening up everything, so it’s okay for us to go out.’ That tells me how much work there is still to do to close those gaps in education.”

To make sure they know how to protect themselves, she educates her patients and their family members on how and when to wear protective gear such as masks and gloves, teaches them about safe distancing and to cover a cough with an elbow or sleeve—and of course, handwashing. Fatima works with residents in Co-op City and New York City public housing, and she often visits families who have several generations crowded together in one apartment—a situation in which preventive measures are crucial.

“They don’t have the space to quarantine or keep away, so what can they do?” Fatima notes. “Education is the best answer. Put me in place, then I can spread the knowledge to keep everybody safe.”

Fatima also remains vigilant herself, donning and doffing personal protective equipment as carefully as she did at the onset of the pandemic. She’s also careful to maintain her distance from others, always takes an elevator with fewer than three people, washes or sanitizes her hands constantly, and makes certain to schedule COVID patients at the end of her shift. Afterwards, she removes all her gear, putting on the change of clothes that she keeps in her trunk, and dumps the contaminated clothing in a bucket at the front door of her home for laundry. “I still do that to this day,” she says.

Wearing the extra equipment is time-consuming and hot, especially in sweltering summer months, and it adds another layer of challenge to the already demanding job of caring for vulnerable patients and their worried families during a pandemic. Fatima is particularly grateful for VNSNY’s facilitated Open Staff Support calls, where staff can share challenges and offer and receive support. “The company’s support speaks volumes to me,” says Fatima. “It’s clear that they care about us as much as they care about our patients.”

Throughout COVID, Fatima—like all VNSNY clinicians and home health aides in the field—has also provided vital care to people living with other health conditions and crises that do not go away in the face of a pandemic. Recently, what she expected to be a routine visit to a patient with diabetes turned into a life-saving intervention when she found him unresponsive in bed and performed CPR until he revived. The episode is all the more powerful in her mind because she’d originally planned to visit later in the day, but a change in scheduling opened up an earlier slot—and possibly saved the patient’s life.

“The patient’s wife was so grateful,” Fatima recounts. “She said, ‘God sent you to me!’ She calls me her angel.”

To read more VNSNY Heroes of 2020 stories, click here.