Travel nurses deal with stress, loneliness and mistrust while serving as a COVID-19 rapid deployment system

After another workday marked by unimaginable death, Veronica O'Kane would return to a hotel room -- empty except for the dumbbell she brought from home. The travel nurse from Ontario, Canada, took a contract in Maryland to provide support to a hospital struggling under the demands of the coronavirus pandemic. Isolated, to keep herself and her patients safe, O'Kane spent the time she wasn't tending to critical care coronavirus patients working out alone in her hotel room or calling her loved ones to cry.