National Nurses Week kicks off today, and health care workers stepped up in a big way in the pandemic.

Edwin Torres, a nurse practitioner at Montefiore, was deployed twice to work directly with COVID patients.

He says he faced fears coming into work during those days.

“How can we make this patient more comfortable, reassure them that we’re doing everything that we can so we can help them get through this,” Torres says.

Before the pandemic, Torres worked with diabetes patients in outreach clinics.

He worked on the oxygen transport team in the Bronx and then in the monoclonal antibody clinic at Montefiore when cases got bad.

Although these were out of his comfort zones, he realized the importance of the health care workers across the borough.

“What the pandemic showed me is that I belong to a very special community who cares about the health of their community, of their fellow man,” Torres says.

The nurse practitioner says he hasn’t stopped working with diabetes patients, and uses his free time to connect with them virtually.

Torres is back working with patients full-time and encouraging them to get vaccinated.