COVID-19 response: How Providence Southwest Washington continues to serve our Mission
At Providence, we care for individuals with infectious diseases every day, and we have experience in preparing for pandemics from H1N1 to Ebola. We drew on those plans to prepare for COVID-19. Our experience, training, and experts are what keeps our community safe.
Since our first Incident Command meeting in February until present day, we continue to focus on safety measures for our patients, caregivers, and communities. This Incident Command is ongoing and will not stand down until the pandemic is fully stabilized, making it the most extended Incident Command in the history of Providence Southwest Washington.
Our story is your story. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, our community did not hesitate to provide support by donating personal protective equipment (PPE) meals, and other supplies to our frontline workers. We watched our community come together with neighbors helping neighbors, we felt the gratitude for our dedicated medical staff, and we pivoted in a virtual, socially-distanced world.
We adapted and found new ways to work.
As a safety precaution to prevent the risk of spreading COVID-19 and to conserve PPE, ICU beds, and ventilators, Providence St. Peter and Centralia hospitals postponed non-emergent or elective surgeries.
With non-emergent surgeries temporarily paused, we redeployed caregivers into appropriate roles that matched their skills. Due to most surgeries postponed, some of our surgical nurses and medical assistants used their experience in regularly donning and doffing PPE to become PPE spotters, helping caregivers properly wear their gowns, gloves, masks, and PAPR hoods.
Gov. Inslee’s stay-at-home order meant many of our non-clinical caregivers began working from home, and some of our caregivers also had school children home for virtual learning.
We coordinated creative new ways to connect patients with loved ones.
To limit the spread of infectious illnesses, we limited in-person visits to patients. We know the value visitors bring to our patients, and to help ease their way through this scary and lonely time, we provided iPads for virtual visits with loved ones.
As a service area that is part of a large hospital system, we leveraged the organization’s resources and innovations to quickly launch telemedicine visits for patients to continue seeing providers in our Providence Medical Group clinics.
We rapidly responded to the needs of our community.
As testing became more of a need across our service area, we implemented a drive-thru COVID-19 sample collection site at our Providence Medical Group – Hawks Prairie Clinic. Since March 20, the site has seen about 200 patients a day, offering this service at no cost to the community in partnership with Thurston County.
At Providence, we live our Mission to care for all including the poor and vulnerable. It is a privilege to provide quality care each day, and we are honored by the trust placed in us by our patients and our community.
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