Elizabeth “Lizzie” Simonds, who studied ancient Greek at Oxford and Middle Eastern diplomacy at the University of Virginia before training as a paramedic in rural Middle Tennessee. She now works in Vanderbilt’s COVID unit. Photo by Erin O. Smith
The words, the images, the memories come back to Elizabeth “Lizzie” Simonds, the only critical care paramedic in VUMC’s COVID unit.
The man who was scared and couldn’t rest: “I spent 45 minutes…sitting next to him, holding his hand so he felt safe enough to try to sleep for a little bit.”
Another patient haunted by his sickness and the isolation it imposes: “It’s hard to be on this side,” he said. “After a while it doesn’t mean anything anymore. You look good one day, bad the next, never knowing. It’s 1:30 right now, soon it will be 3:30. It scares me that time passes and it doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
The young woman who was very particular about her nails – the patient’s mom told Simonds that she hated the feeling of having dirt under her nails: “I spent a while one evening cleaning carefully under each nail with a ChloraPrep to get them sparkling clean.” After the young woman went home, Simonds got a card from her mother thanking her for the special care Simonds had shown her daughter.
Simonds’ role as a paramedic makes her unique among the caregivers in the COVID unit, but her education and training would make her stand out in any group. She studied ancient Greek language and literature at the University of Oxford in England, before graduating from the University of Virginia with a degree in foreign affairs with a concentration in the Middle East.
Simonds’ role as a paramedic makes her unique among the caregivers in the COVID unit, but her education and training would make her stand out in any group.
She studied ancient Greek language and literature at the University of Oxford in England, before graduating from the University of Virginia with a degree in foreign affairs with a concentration in the Middle East.
This is not the path most people take to being a paramedic, but the same curiosity that led Simonds to her eclectic academic interests drew her to VUMC.
She is from California but her family moved to Virginia when she was in high school. After college, she was thinking about law school and came to Vanderbilt to interview. She decided against a career in the law, but began spending time in Middle Tennessee after her parents moved to the area.
After finishing training in the EMT and paramedic programs at Columbia State Community College, the former classics scholar at Oxford worked for three years as a paramedic in rural Middle Tennessee.
“I decided to take a wilderness first-responders course,” she said. This was a multi-day course in how to assess and manage medical problems in extreme environments.
Simonds was hooked.
“I found it so fascinating,” she said. “I decided to go to EMT school, then to paramedic school.”
After finishing those programs at Columbia State Community College, the former classics scholar at Oxford worked for three years as a paramedic in rural Middle Tennessee.
It was in her role as a paramedic that she came to the attention of Kevin High, RN, MPH, MHPE, manager of Trauma Resuscitation program in Emergency Medicine and a former flight nurse. High was teaching a course offered by LifeFlight about airway management in trauma patients.
“At that time she was a paramedic with Marshall County EMS,” High recalled. “She was totally engaged with the course, bright and inquisitive.”
“I encouraged her to attend a future educational event we had planned and hopefully come to work for us. Fortunately for us she did; she is an excellent practitioner and great resource for us.”
Since one of her areas of expertise is ultrasound-guided IV placement, she has been especially called-on to provide this care to patients in the COVID unit. It’s also the way that she is able to spend time and get to know them.
Simonds began working with LifeFlight Event Medicine in 2015 as a PRN (as needed) employee. She became a full-time VUMC employee in 2016 in the Pediatric Emergency Department at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, and also worked on a PRN basis in Vanderbilt’s Adult Emergency Department.
Soon after she started full-time work at Vanderbilt, she joined VUMC’s Communicable Disease Response Unit (CDRU), which was formed in response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. When this group of volunteers at Vanderbilt was forming to train to care for patients with potentially deadly infectious diseases, Simonds, predictably, was eager to join.
That training included learning and practicing how to put on, take off, and work wearing the most advanced personal protective equipment (PPE). With the advent of the pandemic, that training and expertise with protocols surrounding care for highly infectious patients was vitally needed.
Simonds was among those who transitioned to caring for patients with COVID in the Medical Center’s dedicated unit for those patients.
Since one of her areas of expertise is ultrasound-guided IV placement, she has been especially called-on to provide this care to patients in the unit. It’s also the way that she is able to spend time and get to know them.
While Simonds has been caring for patients at VUMC, she has also been pursing another goal – finishing prerequisite course work to apply for medical school.
Like the man who just wanted someone to have a meal with.
“I was doing his IV and we began talking,” she said. “I think it’s so important to take time to visit. They go through so much alone. We’re the only people who can go into that room.” (Family members visit from outside the room through windows, or via video).
It was a busy day and she had to move on right then but she told the patient she would come back the next day when she knew she would be able to sit with him while he had dinner.
“I think it was meatloaf day,” she said. The patient had his dinner and a few minutes to have a conversation and focus on something other than being sick in the hospital.
“It’s nice to have moments for us that are happy,” Simonds said. “Times when we’re not there with a task — just to visit.”
While Simonds has been caring for patients at VUMC, she has also been pursing another goal – finishing prerequisite course work to apply for medical school.
“It was when I was working in the Peds ED that I realized I wanted to be a doctor,” she said. For two years she has been taking the necessary classes at Middle Tennessee State in Murfreesboro, finishing up the last of them while working in the COVID unit. She is now applying to medical schools and looking forward to that next chapter of her life.
“I cannot say enough good things about this team,” she said of the ICU and COVID unit employees. “They are so inspiring to me and embracing of me.
“It’s been an incredible, epic, growing journey.”
