Page 7 - White Plains Hospital Annual Report 2020-2021

HERE’S A GLIMPSE AT WHAT IT WAS LIKE:
DR. MICHAEL PALUMBO, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, AND CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER:
“THE HOURS WERE LONG; THE STRESS WAS HIGH.”
“We were spending nine to 14 hours a day in that room, seven days a week. For five or six weeks, none of us took a single day off. Our phones were constantly ringing, text messages and emails were going off all day, we got to be on a speed-dial basis with our people at the Department of Health. There was no end to the variety of questions that popped up, whether they were around medical treatment, family concerns, how to handle the stress that the staff was under, worrying about our supply of PPE, what to do about testing, etc.”
LEIGH ANNE MCMAHON, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, PATIENT CARE SERVICES AND CHIEF NURSING OFFICER:
“PRESSURE WAS COMING FROM EVERYWHERE."
“How are we going to figure this out? is what we were all thinking. We knew that the staff was depending on us, the patients in this community were depending on us, so we felt that pressure to step up. We had pressure coming from the government because they were saying we had
to increase our bed capacity by 50%; there was pressure from the staff over PPE supplies. There was pressure over ventilators; we saw from what was happening in Italy and China that COVID patients require ventilators. We just knew everyone was looking to us and depending on us to figure this out.”
DR. PALUMBO:
“THE RULES KEPT CHANGING.”
“The virus was spreading so rapidly, and we kept getting conflicting news: How long from infection before a person develops symptoms? What are the quarantine rules? The CDC would say one thing, and the state wouldn’t adopt it, or they flat-out said they disagreed. And part of the challenge
to the team in that room was to understand everything that we were hearing, and always put the patient first, while also making sure that we were protecting our staff and not taking any unnecessary risks.”
MCMAHON:
“WE’VE GOT TO KEEP EVERYONE CALM.”
“It was hard to know what to do; we really didn’t have all the answers. But we knew as leaders, we had to keep cool and just say, ‘We are going to figure this out.’ We knew we had to keep staff calm.”
MCMAHON:
“WE HAD TO FORMULATE A GAME PLAN.”
“As healthcare providers, we are not used to working in confusion. We are meticulous; we’re educated; we’re very mindful—each step we take is prescriptive because we have patients’ lives that are impacted by every decision we make. And, with this, we didn’t have time to work the way we normally do; we had to adapt quickly. Information was coming at us non-stop and as leaders, we
2020-2021 ANNUAL REPORT
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