Our ‘Frontline Worker of the Week’ is Nurse Esofa Piggott

Apr 26, 2020 News

By Sharmain Grainger

The world is currently faced with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), a pandemic of unprecedented proportions. To contain the disease and halt its spread, many countries have employed drastic measures ranging from closing their air spaces to prohibiting non-essential work. The outcome: many economies have started to crumble.On the frontline battling this dreaded plague are our healthcare workers who, in some cases, are under-appreciated for the daring role they play. Daring because they willingly risk their lives, daily, armed with merely Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) – not weapons like guns and war tanks – but usually gloves, masks and gowns to protect them from infection.

Head Nurse of the COVID-19 ICU, Esofa Piggott

Heroes they are, legends even, for they too could have been in lockdown mode, like many are today, in an attempt to safeguard themselves, and oh yes, their families too. In essence, they are people just like me and you, except they are the ones who help those infected get better as far as possible.
Millions have been reported infected and thousands are dead across the world; here in Guyana there are just over seventy confirmed cases and eight deaths at the time of writing this piece. But when one compares the numbers that are dead, even here in Guyana, with those who sought healthcare and recovered, there is a clear indication that those within the healthcare system are doing something right.
Healthcare workers at various levels, and their support staff, have been doing their part, and it is to highlight the outstanding role they play that we here at Kaieteur News have decided to introduce a ‘Frontline Worker of the Week’ feature.
This week, our Frontline Worker is Nurse Esofa Piggott, who is part of a team at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) dedicated to the fight against the novel coronavirus. He wears several hats as a health professional – Registered Nurse, Registered Midwife, Emergency Medical Responder, Spirometric Technician and Asthma Educator.
As a member of the team, which many within the system have dubbed “The Suicide Squad”, Piggott has the distinction of being the Head Nurse in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU).What is interesting to note though, those, like Nurse Piggott, making up the COVID-19 team, volunteered to offer their services, a choice that has seen them pretty much giving up their family lives. Nurse Piggott, for instance, has a wife, Cystral Renita Jacobus-Piggott, and two young children – six-year-old Esofa Jamal Emmanuel Piggott Junior and four-month-old Christiano Ezekiel Piggott – whom he rarely spends time with these days, for their safety.
To date, no member of the COVID-19 team has been infected and Nurse Piggott is hopeful that their status will remain that way. But it has been, especially hard for those with close-knit families like Nurse Piggott’s. “I can’t spend time with my family like before; I can’t even hug my kids and wife,” he confided. This he recognizes is all in the quest to achieve a greater good – a safer Guyana.

A family man ready to give up everything to serve his nation

A HEALTH PROFESSIONAL IS BORN
Born on April 11, 1990, to parents Marcia Piggott-Drayton and David O’Neil, at the very hospital he currently works, Nurse Piggott spent the first four years of his life living in Georgetown. He was later relocated to Zorg on the Essequibo Coast, like several of his siblings, to be raised by his maternal grandmother, Megan Gloria Piggott, a head teacher at the Fisher Nursery School back in the day.
His grandmother, Nurse Piggott recalled, wanted to raise her grandchildren so that she could school them properly. “To her that foundation was necessary,” Nurse Piggott said of his grandmother, as he recalled that his aunt, Marcelle Piggott-Waterman, also helped to raise him.
After attending Fisher Nursery School, Nurse Piggott said he was a student of Fisher Primary School and then Suddie Primary, where he wrote the secondary school entrance examination that allowed him to secure a place at The Bishops’ High School. Circumstances prevented him from attending that city school, and so instead he completed his secondary education at Anna Regina Multilateral School.
As a young boy he hadn’t a clue what profession he wanted to venture into, but for some strange reason he always had a desire to help people. “I just knew that whatever I ended up doing, it was going to be helping people. I did think about becoming a lawyer at one time; I did think of becoming a doctor at one time too,” Nurse Piggott recounted.

Nurse Piggott sometimes sheds his scrubs for designer wear.

But according to him, “The doctor thought only came up because my late uncle, Mark Piggott, after I finished high school at 16-plus with eight subjects and was home for a whole year, called me up and was willing to guide me along the medicine path.” This, however, did not pan out, since the young version of Nurse Piggott wasn’t too keen on taking the available option of travelling to Cuba to study.
Intrigued he was, however, with things health. This caused him to take note of his maternal aunt, Michelle Piggott, who started her profession in the healthcare system as a Nursing Assistant. “The little that I know, she became a very good nurse, but later I found out, she was actually an excellent nurse,” Nurse Piggott shared.
He was also inspired by his uncle’s wife who worked as a senior supervisor at the Suddie Hospital. Before long, he was on his way to undertake the professional nursing programme at the Georgetown School of Nursing.
After completing the tedious programme, he was stationed at the Accident and Emergency Unit of the GPHC, and almost a decade has elapsed since venturing into the field of nursing – a profession which truly helps him to fulfill his passion for helping others.
PUSHED TO THE LIMIT
He didn’t mind being stationed, and even begged to remain, at the most popular hospital in the country since, according to Nurse Piggott, he has an affinity to be “pushed to the limit”, a fate that many health professionals at the GPHC understand all too well, by virtue of the consistently vast patient-load there.
“The challenge when I started would have been like caring for 40 to 60 patients on one unit. For me that is the kind of challenge I like…I like a situation that looks impossible, literally, but you can find a solution or get a positive outcome in the end,” said Nurse Piggott.
But what has made Nurse Piggott even more prepared to be a part of the COVID-19 team is the fact that back in 2013, he was selected to be a part of a new department of the hospital – The Spirometry, Asthma and COPD Lab – which aims to effectively treat patients with respiratory conditions. COVID-19 is a disease that has been found to cause respiratory complications.
However, Nurse Piggott noted that being prepared to be on a team to help combat this disease requires more than just training. “To me you have to be self-motivated…and we were self-motivated long before the disease reached Guyana. We had many meetings in preparation where we discussed our response if the disease did come here,” said Nurse Piggott.
In becoming self-motivated, he admitted, “before I decided to be a part of the team, I did take time to think about it, and I decided this is what I wanted to do…some may think of me as a fool for being such a risk-taker, because I am recently married with two kids, one very young.”
While for Nurse Piggott it was a choice to get onboard, he noted that “if this pandemic really gets out of hand here, like it has in some countries, all hands will have to be on deck whether you are prepared or not.”
Both Nurse Piggott and his wife are nurses, so it wasn’t too hard to get her to understand why making the choice to be a part of the COVID-19 team at the GPHC was important. “Dealing with this has been about 10 percent easier, because my wife is a registered nurse as well. She is in the system and she has an understanding of the position (Head Nurse) that I hold, and why I am needed at this time.”
DEALING WITH DISRIMINATION
But with the arrival of COVID-19, the nursing profession, which was long recognized as a noble one, has since been abased to the point of discrimination by an ignorant few.
“I think this is happening because of a lack of education; I think that is really the sore point in this thing,” said Nurse Piggott, as he shared a few instances where nurses have been prevented from entering some establishments or even public transportation, since some are fearful they are infected merely because they are health professionals.
“Some people see our nurses and immediately start telling others ‘that one got coronavirus’ just because they are working at the hospital. The curfew has even affected how some staff at the hospital get to work as well…because some people need public transportation to get to work,” Nurse Piggott noted. Some measures have since been put in place to address the latter development.
“Sometimes we feel like some people are spitting in our faces just because we are trying to do our civil duty,” said Nurse Piggott, as he spoke of services available to help those who are most affected to cope. “We have access to psychological care, or we try to just speak to someone. For me, just having someone listen helps me to relax and press on. Another initiative we have started is group sessions with staff, at least once a week, so we can discuss what affects us,” he revealed.
Dealing with issues health professionals face in wake of COVID-19 is important, since, according to Nurse Piggott, “we know that we cannot discriminate when we are dealing with patients. Even if some of the perpetrators come to us seeking medical attention, we have to render the best care possible, regardless of who comes to us for healthcare.”
Although it isn’t always an easy task, health workers, and support staff as well, are constantly reminded that in caring for others “we have to put our pride aside…this job ain’t got nothing to do with malice, if you have malice you shouldn’t be in this profession, it is as simple as that, because anything you are doing should be for the love of it; don’t do it for money, because that money thing don’t always work out”.
But what keeps professionals like Nurse Piggott motivated, is the fact that health workers keep turning up for work every day committed to doing their part to fight one of the most dreaded pandemics of all time. “I really expected the absenteeism rate to be up by more than 40 percent but shockingly, persons are working more now, than they would have worked without COVID-19…it’s ridiculous,” said Nurse Piggott amid a chuckle.
His request to the masses, which is echoed by his colleagues, is to “appreciate the role they play by doing your part to help flatten the infection curve sooner rather than later”.
Some have already been doing their part, even quietly supporting health workers with items to ensure they can take care of themselves, and Nurse Piggott noted “we are very appreciative and will continue to do our best to help save lives.”

“We have to put our pride aside…this job ain’t got nothing to do with malice. If you have malice you shouldn’t be in this profession, it is as simple as that, because anything you are doing should be for the love of it; don’t do it for money, because that money thing don’t always work out.”