Health Care

9/11 firefighter gets 2nd carreer as home nurse

Sept. 11 was the shakeup New York didn’t need. However, for one man, it caused a positive disruption.

In 2001, New York City firefighter Edward Moriarty was a battalion chief, and was not caught in the collapse, but he had been a firefighter at Ladder 132 and Lieutenant and Captain of Ladder 105 in Brooklyn. Both firehouses lost their whole crew, six men each, on 9/11.

After that day, he was appointed chief of personnel, where he hired new probationary firefighters to rebuild the department — approximately 3,000 firefighters retired because of the psychological and physical repercussions of 9/11 and the subsequent work that was being done at the World Trade Center. But when his own retirement loomed, he reconsidered his vocation and he decided to enroll in nursing school.

“In 1990, emergency medical services merge[d] with the fire department,” he says. “We became first responders and got involved with healthcare. We’d get to a scene in a minute or two; [we] saw all sorts of emergencies: shootings, stab wounds, car accidents. We would try to stabilize the patient until the medical team arrived.”

That’s when he learned to appreciate nurses.

So, rather than enjoy his well-deserved retirement, he pursued a second career as a nurse, motivated by what he had seen. While finishing out his firefighting career, Moriarty studied nursing on nights and weekends at Molloy College in Rockville Centre, LI, and joined the Visiting Nurse Service of New York in 2006.

He was placed on a VNSNY team that partnered with home care doctors from Mount Sinai hospital to treat  homebound patients with multiple pressure ulcers. This experience made him want to specialize in wound care.

The most common wounds are surgical wounds — people recovering at home from surgery are often waiting for their skin to heal, as well as any muscles, bones and fat that may have been cut.

“The wounds need to be observed and treated. This might mean having sutures (stitches) or staples removed, cleaning them, and teaching the patient when they can shower and the importance of hand washing,” says Moriarty.

The way a wound heals depends greatly on the patient’s comorbidities, or other ailments. Diabetes and congestive heart failure are common comorbidities that decide the episode of care.

Nursing also has a social-work element, as well as spiritual care in the case of hospices and end-of-life situations.

“I was a hospice nurse, and you have to be careful of what you say and how you say it,” says Moriarty. “It’s best to walk in, sit with the patient at eye level, introduce yourself, ask them ‘How you doing?’ and listen,” he says. “I describe what I’m going to do and why I’m there, and in 90 percent of cases that connects you right away.”

Moriarty has treated cancer patients at the end-of-life stage, in both hospices and at home; these patients often undergo some particularly cruel agonies. For example, cancerous tumors that were not removed can start to fungate.

“It creates a psychosocial problem: there’s odor, the patient can be depressed that they’re going to die, they’re embarrassed and don’t want people to come, and then their friends don’t understand why. We provide a lot of care that just prevents this odor from happening.”

Moriarty also treats burn patients, not just from fire but also in cancer patients due to radiation treatments. The biggest problem with burns is infection.

“There’s a myth that you have to leave a wound open to the air to form a scab,” he says. “A scab is necrotic tissue — it hinders healing. You get scars. Moist healing is the best method for a superficial wound, and one of the best things is standard Vaseline.”

Moriarty loves his job. But it’s no picnic.

“Nursing is very hard work. You end up doing a lot of extra work beyond the 40 hours, talking on the phone to doctors and patients and caregivers.”

In hospice care, and particularly when providing end-of-life care for people at home, patients and their families tend to be very grateful.

“It’s a very tough profession, but with great rewards,” he says. “The family will remember you forever because you were there at a special time for them.”