Observations of Greatness
It's hard to choose "One" Good Thing this week, so here are some (not comprehensive) observations of greatness:
Perhaps the first is the gift of time we've been given to prepare for what's to come; that the Bay Area was among the first to shelter in place; that when we were running out of masks, 500, 000 of them arrived through the help of Marc Benioff, among droves of other community donations and offers of support; that when we were on the brink of running out of swabs for testing, 4000 of them arrived from the federal government.
Things that routinely would have taken months to years happened in days to weeks; a few examples being:
- Voalte rolled out to the rest of the organization, allowing us to easily text among the care team, and creating huge time savings and improved communication across our clinical settings.
- Ambulatory visits transformed from under 2% to over 50% video/phone to remotely care for patients.
- Capacity was expanded in all our clinical areas through:
- Preparations for Mt. Zion reopening for inpatients
- Additional ICU rooms converted to negative pressure rooms
- Multiple respiratory symptom clinics and video clinics erected with "fast lanes" for swabbing and testing
- Emergency Department ACUs
- Creation of an inpatient Respiratory Isolation Unit on 15 Long with dedicated staffing
- A ramping down of elective clinical activities and routine business
- Creating additional layers of stand by and back up for clinical services and redeployment of our people into needed roles.
- UCSF began enrolling patients in a clinical trial for treating COVID-19 under PI Dr. Annie Luetkemeyer and UCSF Health Site PI Dr. Sarah Doernberg; while some of our researchers converted the focus of their research labs to COVID-19 related efforts.
- Our Medical Students organized blood drives, helped collect donations, and are working with our leaders on culturally sensitive COVID-19 videos for patients with Limited English Proficiency.
- Our Care Transitions team is working with the City of SF and SFDPH to house patients with COVID-19 illness who are otherwise marginally housed, homeless or live in congregate settings.
A set of
resources were put in place to support us:
- A website of various just-in-time, by request, and self help emotional health resources was assembled; with 60 mental health clinicians from Social Work and the Department of Psychiatry and 400 peer supporters across our organization making themselves available on request through the phenomenal teamwork of Caring for the Caregiver, FSAP, Spiritual Care, Palliative Care, Dept of Psychiatry and our Web Team, all led by Kiran Gupta, Weston Fisher and Sarah Lahidji.
- Hotel accommodations allow employees up to a 3 night stay for those who prefer or need to self isolate, have back to back shifts, are on call or live out of region, thanks to Sheila Antrum and Kim Murphy.
- The Department of Psychiatry assembled this list of apps for mindfulness and well-being that can be accessed for free or at a discount.
And most of all, all of you stepped in to care for patients, make the best of this uncertain environment, and to lead our efforts to focus, prepare and respond with an unsurpassed effectiveness, often in roles you never expected to take and working with teams new to you to get things done. Thank You.
What has been gained by our alignment, creativity and facilitation of response in this time will last us well past these next few months.
