The onslaught of COVID-19 demanded a coordinated medical response unlike anything we've seen before. When the need for medical providers was dire, Yale doctors, nurses, and medical staff from across all departments answered the call to serve. Read more in YNHH Transforms for COVID-19 Care and Resident/Fellows Step Up to Help .
the onslaught of covert 19 demanded a coordinated medical response unlike anything we've seen before. But how do you plan for a pandemic? We didn't know what target we needed to meet your usual on existing patient populations. What's gonna happen to them? How many patients are we going to staff the critical care units to? Really? How are we going to staff the hospital? How many ventilators? How many dialysis way have to think about safety? In addition, Thio deployment. We knew from the get go on. No matter how this played out that we were gonna get stretched really thin, seeking support for medical staff treating Cove in 19 patients. Ah, call was sent out for volunteers. Way called for reinforcements and how, after colleagues to step out of their comfort zone and come and stand with us in The idea of response was actually quite overwhelming. From that we got back nearly 800 volunteers. These air, everybody Urology, neurology, pediatrics, You name it, you know? So I'm a surgical oncologist. I take care of patients with cancer and melanoma. So I think helping patients helping my colleagues helping society as a whole is why Between the physician and this once in a lifetime crisis, eyes something identified as something where I am able to do all three things in volunteering help. But securing volunteers was only half the battle. On the one hand, what you're doing is you're trying to keep staffing low. On the other hand, what you wanna do is have a plan in place to have adequate staffing when lots of patients come in. If we could keep staff away when the volume is low and do so in a way that first of all keeps them safe, prevents them from getting infections on there. Also available physically, emotionally, mentally, when we need them in the days and weeks to come. That's the strategy that we used basically a lot of planning by a lot of people and then flexibility on the part of the volunteers that initially we were calling people as we need them. And then, as it became clear we needed them consistently, it became a schedule. First day in the Miku. I was I was a bit nervous, but you know, very soon that anxiety was alleviated with comfort, and the reason for that is this is the whole team of individuals of healthcare workers that air coming together on Help me out society and helping out the patient. So we were all in this together and it was, ah, very special thing to see. I don't think we really thought of ourselves as a neuro intensive care teams or surgeons or dermatologists. We've really thought of ourselves as Yale. You know what? We really can't call this an individual. We've been able to achieve a community in these times of stress. What you see is that people's mission comes to the front that this is why I went into medicine. This is why I became a nurse. This is why I work at Yale School of Medicine, or only Haven Hospital is that I actually wanna help for all in this together. And I think you just have to walk on the wards and see that that is life right now.
