SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
At the start of the pandemic, health care workers saw death at a scale few had ever seen before. They asked for help with post-traumatic stress disorder and other health issues that grew out of that period but have received little support. Amy Maxmen of our reporting partner KFF Health News reports.
AMY MAXMEN, BYLINE: From the moment I knock on her door, you can tell Debra Ragoonanan is a caretaker. The first thing she did was offer me lunch.
DEBRA RAGOONANAN: I made parboiled rice with stewed chicken with pigeon peas and potato.
MAXMEN: She's a natural host and upbeat. But in May, she suffered a brain aneurysm. This was on top of panic attacks, memory loss and other symptoms of PTSD, a condition that's been associated with aneurysms. She's a nursing assistant. She traces her health issues today back to her work early in the pandemic. In 2020, the Soldiers' Home at Holyoke had one of the deadliest COVID outbreaks at a long-term care facility. About 80 veterans died within a few months.
RAGOONANAN: I had COVID. I had to go to work because they're threatening people, and they have no staff. And then our veterans dying.
MAXMEN: Ragoonanan was witnessing so much death around her she picked out a funeral dress. She reaches into her closet and takes it out of a garment bag. It's black velvet on top with a magenta skirt.
RAGOONANAN: You get to see a little about my life.
MAXMEN: She had become close to the veterans over the years, and it was devastating to watch them die.
RAGOONANAN: Somebody's face was shrunken, and they were vomiting. We would go to work and hug each other and cry. And we have to do the job.
MAXMEN: Soldiers' Home is a state-run facility. After the outbreak made headlines in March 2020, Massachusetts investigated. It documented a series of poor decisions by leaders of the home. The supervisor, Bennett Walsh, resigned. Through his lawyer, Walsh declined to comment about the investigation or on allegations that nursing assistants were pressured to work while they were sick. Veterans harmed in the outbreak sued the facility. The state agreed to pay them $56 million. Frontline caretakers also sued, asking for compensation for emotional trauma and long COVID. But the case was dismissed. A judge wrote that caretakers could have quit if they wanted to. Ragoonanan says that wasn't an option financially. She's still working today.
RAGOONANAN: So that's a double whammy. When we're healthy, they use us, and when we're not healthy, they through us away.
MAXMEN: Trauma specialist Laura van Dernoot Lipsky has been contacted by health care workers around the country, asking for help with PTSD.
LAURA VAN DERNOOT LIPSKY: I think we're only at the beginning of seeing what the cumulative toll is.
MAXMEN: She says workers can be re-traumatized on their shifts.
VAN DERNOOT LIPSKY: If you are walking in the same door and it's the same sights and sounds, it is very hard for your brain to help you understand this present moment is not what you've lived through thus far.
MAXMEN: Researchers are studying the impact of stress on lower-wage health care workers like nursing assistants, home aides and cleaners. Rachel Hoopsick is at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
RACHEL HOOPSICK: Some of our preliminary findings are suggesting that the folks that are made most vulnerable are those that are working in those lower-wage health care support occupations. We're seeing increased burnout, increased substance use among this group.
MAXMEN: Part of the problem is compared to doctors and nurses, they have less control over what they do at work. They're also less able to take time off or change jobs, and health workers harmed in the pandemic haven't gotten the support and compensation offered to others who have sacrificed for the country, like soldiers and first responders in the September 11 attacks. In Holyoke, Massachusetts, I'm Amy Maxmen.
SIMON: Amy is with KFF Health News.
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