Photo By Petty Officer 2nd Class Minh-Thy Chu | NORTH CHICAGO, Ill. (February 24, 2021) Sheeba Varughese, IV Room manager at the...... read more read more
The extraordinary and ongoing COVID-19 vaccination effort at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center has brought out the best in staff, many who volunteered to create a formidable team dedicated to one thing – getting shots in the arms of every staff member and as many of the FHCC’s veteran, military and military dependent patients as possible.
From the late December day the first Moderna vaccines were delivered with fanfare to the North Chicago hospital, it became apparent that what would typically be done through the Immunizations Clinic was too big of an operation for the limited clinical staff.
“We knew we had to stand up a group of people to basically volunteer to be vaccinators,” said FHCC Assistant Director of Plans and Operations Kathleen Kennedy.
FHCC Gastroenterology Nurse Manager April Shaw was given the task to manage staff volunteers who would be running the staff vaccination clinic. This team dedicated six weeks to COVID-19 vaccinations for staff in the Family Practice Clinic. By the end of the seventh week, 73 percent of staff were vaccinated, including VA and Department of Defense employees.
Chief of Pharmacy Laurie Noschese and Regional Immunizations Program Manager Randy Tolbert were the two COVID-19 vaccine coordinators tasked to deploy staff vaccines. The two were provided support from the team of volunteers including nurses, pharmacy employees, and medical support assistants.
At first, some Navy staff at Lovell FHCC were unable to access the online appointment booking tool developed at another VA facility for staff to schedule their vaccinations. Once the clinic had enough doses on hand, walk-in appointments were opened for all staff, which mitigated the issue.
As the clinic became busier, more administrative staff volunteered to manage the “flow” of the clinic, checking people in, handing out paperwork, and scheduling second dose appointments. This allowed clinical staff to focus on their medical roles - vaccinating and observing those who had received the vaccine. Volunteers also helped MSAs schedule appointments over the phone, in some cases quadrupling the amount of calls they would be able to make alone. According to Kennedy, there was never a shortage of willing volunteers to help the COVID-19 vaccination effort.
“COVID-19 operations have the ability to unify everyone as a team,” she said. “It’s something we all live through at work and at home. People really understand the significance of what they’re doing.”
At one point during staff vaccinations, a roving team of vaccinators and other volunteers brought the COVID-19 vaccine to Lovell FHCC Branch Clinics at Recruit Training Command and Naval Station Great Lakes, allowing staff members the convenience of getting vaccinated near their work sites, rather than at the main hospital. The ability to offer this option displayed the flexibility of the vaccination team, Kennedy added. Since the vaccine was made available to FHCC Community Living Center residents first and then to outpatients in mid-January, the team has made similar trips to vaccinate staff and patients at Lovell FHCC’s Community Based Outpatient Clinics in Evanston, Kenosha and McHenry. The CBOCs don’t currently have the capacity to operate their own COVID-19 vaccination clinics.
The start of outpatient vaccinations dramatically increased the clinic’s operations, from an average of 100 daily immunizations to about 250 a day. With this change, the clinic began relying more on administrative volunteers to keep the area organized and Facility Management staff to ensure the area was safe.
With the need for social distancing still vital, COVID-19 vaccination space needs initially overwhelmed the Family Practice Clinic. The clinic moved to Bourke Hall in Building 4, on the east side of the hospital’s campus.
Retrofitting Bourke Hall was no easy task. The work fell largely on Facility Management staff, who did everything from building bays for patients to safely sit and social distance during the post vaccination observation period to turning hallways into pandemic-friendly waiting rooms. Kennedy and the team had a vision for the layout of the larger clinic, and it was up to FHCC Facility Operations Specialist Derrik Heinzen to execute it.
“Another way we were able to maximize the patients at Bourke Hall was to purchase plastic dividers,” Heinzen said. “These plastic dividers allowed us to sit people closer together than the usual six feet apart, enabling us to put more people in a smaller area.”
Soon after Bourke Hall was running as the new clinic setting, the facility received notice of a shipment of 2,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine the week of Feb. 8, 2021.
“Changes of who, where, and when had to be made, and the team was ready to go,” Kennedy said. Before the influx of vaccines, the clinic was receiving an average of 500 doses a week, so schedules had to be modified. Heinzen’s team figured out a way to increase the number of bays in Bourke Hall to double the number of patients who could be vaccinated at once. The larger operation also required support from the FHCC Police, Logistics, Communications, Transportation, and Primary Care departments.
Heinzen recalls members of the facility’s shops staying late on multiple occasions and “putting the needs of the hospital before their own.”
“Not only did we set everything up with a two-day notice, but we received multiple calls throughout the day to fix areas or to rearrange things to help the flow,” Heinzen said. “Facility Management Directorate worked closely with Communications to provide proper signage pointing everyone to Bourke Hall from anywhere on the hospital grounds, and the Transportation Department operated an electric patient mover to help patients get to Bourke Hall from the main hospital.”
Active duty corpsmen assigned to Navy Medical Readiness and Training Command Great Lakes were another group of Lovell FHCC employees who volunteered to man the greatly expanded vaccination effort. During the mass push of Moderna vaccine doses, Navy corpsmen and VA employees were not only running the clinic but transporting patients through the hospital tramways to overcome Bourke Hall’s accessibility limitations. Due to scheduling conflicts with pre-planned renovations, Bourke Hall is not currently being used as a vaccination clinic.
“It’s a great opportunity for corpsmen to use the clinical skills they may not be able to use on a daily basis, depending on where they’re placed in the organization,” Kennedy said.
Since established in 2010 as the nation’s first fully integrated federal health care center in support of both the Department of Defense and the VA, Lovell FHCC’s mission is best captured through the motto, “Readying Warriors, Caring for Heroes.”
One year after the coronavirus pandemic was declared, Lovell FHCC staff is still adapting to the changes in responding to the novel disease.
“The (COVID-19 vaccination) team is so focused on the patients and getting us out of this pandemic,” Kennedy said. “No matter what is thrown at them, when asked if they can do it, the answer is going to be yes.”
| Date Taken: | 03.25.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 03.25.2021 16:29 |
| Story ID: | 392293 |
| Location: | NORTH CHICAGO, IL, US |
| Web Views: | 164 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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