What the Surge Left in Me: An RT's Story of Grief and Recovery

There are shifts you clock out of and shifts that never really end. For me, it was March through June of 2020. I was an RT in a 400-bed hospital outside Detroit, and I intubated more people in those twelve weeks than I had in the previous five years combined. Most of them didn't make it home.

I'm writing this because I know I'm not the only one still carrying it. The respiratory therapist trauma we don't always name. The weight of knowing you did everything right and it still wasn't enough. If you're reading this and you've been there — in the room when the vent settings stopped mattering, when the family couldn't be there, when you were the last voice someone heard — this is for you.

This isn't about being a hero. It's about what happens after.

The Weight You Didn't Know You Were Carrying

For a long time, I didn't call it trauma. I called it being tired. I called it a bad stretch. I told myself that this was the job, that I signed up for this, that other people had it worse.

But my body knew. I stopped sleeping through the night. I'd wake up at 3 a.m. with my heart racing, thinking I'd missed an alarm setting. I started avoiding certain hallways at work — the ones that led to the units where we'd lost the most people. I couldn't listen to the news anymore. Every COVID story felt like it was happening to me all over again.

What I've learned since: clinician grief is real, it's cumulative, and it doesn't care how tough you think you are. The allied health mental health conversation has come a long way, but we still don't talk enough about what it means to lose patient after patient in a compressed time frame. That's not normal clinical practice. That's mass casualty emotional load.

The Memories That Stay

There's one patient I think about more than the others. A man in his fifties, a teacher. He came in on a Thursday and was gone by Monday. I remember his wife on FaceTime, and I remember holding the iPad so she could see his face one last time. I remember her saying “Please don't let him be alone.”

I didn't let him be alone. But I also couldn't save him.

For months, I felt like I was failing every time I remembered him. Like I should've done something different, checked something twice, caught something earlier. My clinical director finally pulled me aside and said, “You're carrying something that was never yours to carry.”

That sentence cracked something open. I started seeing a therapist who specialized in first responder and clinician trauma. I learned that what I was experiencing — intrusive memories, hypervigilance, emotional numbing — had a name. And more importantly, it had a treatment path.

What Recovery Actually Looks Like

I'm not going to tell you I'm “healed.” I don't think that's the right word. But I'm functional. I'm back at work. I can be in a code without my hands shaking. I can sleep most nights.

Here's what helped:

• Peer support groups — I joined a group for RTs and RNs who worked the surge. No one had to explain anything. We all just knew. Research shows peer support reduces RT emotional burnout by up to 40%, and I believe it.
• EMDR therapy — Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It sounds strange, but it worked for the intrusive memories. I could finally think about that teacher without my chest tightening.
• Changing my environment — I took a travel RT contract in Arizona for six months. New hospital, new team, new types of cases. It gave me space to be someone other than “the RT who worked the surge.”
• Permission to grieve — I wrote down the names of the patients I remembered. I let myself feel sad about it. I stopped pretending it didn't matter.

Recovery isn't linear. Some days I'm fine. Some days I hear a vent alarm in a certain pitch and I'm back in that ICU in 2020. But I have tools now. I have language for what I'm feeling. I have people who get it.

For the RTs Still in the Thick of It

If you're reading this and you're still in the middle of your own surge — whether it's COVID, flu season, RSV in the NICU, or just a relentless stretch of bad outcomes — I want you to know this: You are not weak for feeling it. You are not broken. You are a human being doing an impossible thing, and your nervous system is responding exactly the way it's supposed to.

You don't have to wait until you “can't take it anymore” to ask for help. You don't have to earn the right to feel hard things. If you're noticing changes — in your sleep, your patience, your ability to be present with the people you love — that's your body trying to tell you something. Listen.

Some practical things that might help right now:

• Find one person at work you can be honest with. Not fake-fine. Actually honest.
• Set a boundary you've been avoiding. Maybe it's saying no to an extra shift. Maybe it's turning off your phone on your day off.
• Look into your hospital's EAP (Employee Assistance Program). Most offer free short-term counseling. You don't need a crisis to use it.
• Consider a change of scenery. Travel contracts, PRN work in a different setting, even a temporary transfer to a lower-acuity unit. Sometimes you need distance to process what happened.

The Part Where I Tell You It's Okay to Leave

Some of you are going to read this and think, “I don't know if I can keep doing this.”

I want to say this clearly: It is okay to step away. It is okay to leave the bedside. It is okay to decide that the cost is too high. You are not abandoning anyone. You are not a failure. You are a person with limits, and honoring those limits is not the same as giving up.

I stayed. But I have friends who didn't, and I don't think less of them. Some went into education. Some went into sales. One became a massage therapist. They're all okay. You will be okay, whatever you choose.

What I Want You to Remember

The surge left things in all of us. Memories we didn't ask for. Grief that doesn't fit into the normal rhythms of clinical work. A kind of exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix.

But it also left proof. Proof that you showed up. Proof that you stayed when it was hard. Proof that you cared enough to carry the weight, even when it hurt.

You don't have to carry it alone anymore. 🤍

If you're thinking about a change — a new setting, a travel contract, a shift in how you work — the Intuites Recruiting Team understands what allied health professionals have been through. We're not here to sell you on the next job. We're here to listen and help you find a path that feels sustainable. Reach out anytime at contact@intuites.healthcare or visit intuites.healthcare. Sometimes talking it through with someone who gets it is the first step.

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