16 COURIER LIFE, MAY 8-14, 2020
NATIONAL NURSES WEEK
On the front line of COVID-19: Meet
nurse practitioner, Deirdre Keane
Courtesy of Deirdre Keane
BY JENNA BAGCAL
Grand Concourse native Deirdre
Keane’s journey to becoming a nurse
practitioner started when she was just
a teen.
At that time, her father had just died
from cancer and her mother quit her job
to raise her and her siblings. Though
money was tight, Keane recalled that
her mother encouraged her kids to work
hard in all aspects of their lives. The
steadfast work ethic coupled with an inspiration
to work in oncology led Keane
to attend nursing school in Boston.
“I really wanted to work in oncology
after losing my dad to cancer but I knew
my family wouldn’t be able to afford for
me to go to med school and needed a major
that would give me a career straight
out of college. I was very fortunate and
got a scholarship to nursing school in
Boston,” Keane said in an email to the
Bronx Times.
After earning a bachelor’s of science
in nursing, Keane began working as a
pediatric ICU nurse at the Children’s
Hospital at Montefi ore (CHAM).
“I loved and still love it there. However,
I wanted to be the one making the
decisions,” Keane said. “I worked there
for fi ve years full-time while I went to
school part-time at Columbia to become
a nurse practitioner and then continued
to get my doctorate.”
She said that she could never forget
about her dream of taking care of
patients with cancer, so she joined the
team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer
Center (MSKCC) as a pediatric ICU
nurse practitioner. During this time,
she continued working part time and
eventually per diem at Montefi ore.
“Then COVID hit. New York city
was the epicenter of the pandemic and
at the very heart of it, was the Bronx,”
Keane said. “I had to help. So nearly every
night I was not at my full-time job
working as an NP at MSKCC, I was
working as an RN in the pediatric ICU
at CHAM.”
For the past two months, Keane
has worked six nights a week in addition
to attending virtual classes to
earn her MBA from New York University.
She recalled that Montefi ore was
hit “incredibly hard” during the onset
of the COVID-19 crisis and some weeks
at CHAM were “scary and disheartening.”
“We worked as a team and kept going
though and now we are fi nally starting
to see improvements,” she shared.
Keane said that her friends both
near and far have been supportive during
this time, asking if she needed personal
protective equipment (PPE) or
other supplies.
“Truthfully, I, personally, don’t need
anything. The hospitals I work in have
enough PPE to get by and many organizations
have been incredibly generous
by donating food,” said Keane, who
added that her loved ones have also
helped to keep her mental health in
check.
To lend her help even further to the
Bronx, which has the highest COVID-19
death rate in any U.S. county, with
the poorest congressional district,
she joined the East Bronx Democratic
Group. The group had created a mutual
aid fund to address the Bronx’s food insecurity
issue.
“I wanted to help more but free time
is still limited. However, I am a huge
runner and big marathoner. I thought
maybe I could intrigue friends to donate
by setting up a running challenge
for myself,” said Keane.
Together with the group, she created
a fundraiser to raise money for grocery
store cards that would go toward lowincome
families in the Bronx. Her goal
is to run 1000 miles in the next three
months, a feat that she has not yet taken
on before. She aims to match each mile
she runs with a dollar donation.
So far, she’s run 70 miles in the fi rst
six days.
“Just 930 miles to go,” she said.
THEIR COURAGE SAVES
AND RESTORES LIVES
NYC Health + Hospitals
celebrates our fearless and
heroic nurses standing together
against COVID-19
To learn more about our health
care heroes and how to help and
support them, visit
nychealthandhospitals.org/
nychealthheroes
/nychealthandhospitals.org