If you drive past Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix, it’s hard to miss the construction site where a new hospital is emerging.

The 10-story tower – which will replace the aging hospital longtime residents know as “county” – represents a beacon of hope and renewal for the doctors, nurses and other clinicians who fought COVID-19 for the last two years.

It has been an exhausting and challenging time. Our health system disproportionately cares for people with low-incomes and communities of color, groups especially impacted by the pandemic.

In short, our hospital became a medical battle zone.

The children’s emergency department was converted into a COVID-19 intensive care unit, one of five in the hospital, and ER patients were triaged in the waiting room. At times, we felt overwhelmed. We had never seen so many severely ill patients, many struggling to catch their breath, and so much death.

Even today, the numbers seem unreal: Valleywise Health experienced 457 patient deaths due to COVID-19. We’ve treated and discharged 4,172 patients with COVID-19 and seen over 16,200 positive COVID-tests across our system.

Throughout the pandemic, we increased our ICU bed capacity by 33% and the number of adult beds by 20%. This led to demands for increased staffing across all disciplines and countless hours of overtime and extra work. Every single employee was impacted in one way or another.

Our staff was not immune to the virus. Before a vaccine was available, four team members lost their lives to COVID-19. Their photos and names are posted outside the hospital in our healing garden. We will never forget them.

The pandemic represented one of the greatest threats our health care system has ever faced in its 145-year history.

Yet we held together, despite limited resources and a 52-year-old building. We relied on each other, boosted each other and rallied to deliver top quality care. We prayed, we cried, and we prayed some more.

In 2020, we were thrilled when The Arizona Republic honored us and other health care workers as “Arizonans of the Year.” A year later, many of our patients and their families viewed us with skepticism and scorned our best medical advice. We learned to accept that we could not change their opinions.

Today, we have a handful of COVID-19 positive patients and have moved many spaces back to the original functions.

We are hopeful the virus will not come roaring back, but now we know we can handle just about anything. Yes, there is high health care professional turnover and burnout.

At the same time, there are fresh new faces on our floors, new nurses inspired by the pandemic and veteran staff who took to the road to work in communities with the most urgent needs during the pandemic are returning.

As new variants of the virus continue to emerge and fewer people opt to wear face masks, the profile of COVID-19 patients will continue to vary. Vaccines are still not available for children under 5, and many people still have chosen not to get vaccinated.

COVID-19 remains a threat and we need to remain vigilant and use the tools we have available to treat this illness, including vaccination and wearing a mask when transmission is high.

We are better prepared because we have learned many lessons:

Valleywise Health Medical Center, at 24th and Roosevelt streets, opened in 1971 as Maricopa County General Hospital and was renamed Maricopa Medical Center in the 1980s by administrators trying to shed the “county” image.

We’re no longer part of Maricopa County (voters approved a special health care district in 2003), but many of us still proudly wear the “county” moniker. It denotes a toughness, an ability to do more with less and a pride that we take in caring for the neediest.

During the pandemic, that esprit de corps was more evident than ever. Nurses reassured and hugged each other in the darkest times, our medical residents stepped in to staff our COVID-19 units and physicians worked endless hours.

Every day, we’re inspired by co-workers who provide kind, compassionate care to each patient, every time. Working here is truly a calling; we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Dr. Mark MacElwee, District Medical Group, is an internal medicine specialist at Valleywise Health Medical Center. Jennifer Granger, BSN RN, is a nurse manager at the medical center. Reach them at Mark_MacElwee@dmgaz.org and jennifer.granger@valleywisehealth.org.