Spirituality helps front-line COVID health workers

SPOKANE - Before the pandemic, a typical workday for nurse Brianna Ripley was spent caring for patients recovering from an injury, a trauma, or an illness. Then COVID-19 changed everything.

Ripley's unit was turned into the COVID unit at her Spokane area hospital and, like so many other frontline medical workers, she was shifted into the unknown.

Patient care went from seeing patients on the road to recovery and being able to hold their hand to being covered in layers of hot, personal protective equipment, and facing death on a regular basis.

"There were a lot of patients declining and dying,"...