"We will get through this. We can't take away hope...."
Lowell CHC Chief Clinical Officer, Beth Hale, is known for her take charge attitude - and bottomless heart.
As we head into National Nurses Week, we're shining the spotlight on Lowell CHC Chief Clinical Officer, Beth Hale, DNP, RN.
This health care hero even caught the attention of the Lowell Sun.
Enjoy!
Lowell Community Health Center officer: 'We just need to stick together'
By Robert Mills (Lowell Sun)
"Beth Hale, the Chief Clinical Officer at Lowell Community Health Center, has spent weeks helping to direct the center's response to an unprecedented pandemic that leaves many of her patients especially vulnerable due to medical and economic issues.
Hale has helped to set up a special shelter for homeless people who have been exposed to COVID-19 but aren't showing symptoms. She is working with others to prepare for the center to become a COVID-19 testing site. She has helped oversee a drive to reach out to vulnerable patients to inform them of COVID-19. She has worked to ensure the center is reaching patients in all of their languages even as about 1,000 patient calls per day have turned into about 800 telehealth visits per day.
And that's just on the job. Off the job, the pandemic prompted Hale to delay knee surgery that has kept her from fully embracing a typical coping mechanism - exercise. And Hale's daughter is home from school just like all other school children.
When it all gets to be too much, Hale takes some time to step outside.
'There are moments when it's overwhelming,' she said after a recent day of work. 'That's when I shut the computer off and don't watch the news and go out and look at the beautiful growth on the trees and our flowers.'
With about 30 years experience in nursing, Hale has faced pandemics before. Early in her career there was the AIDS pandemic, another crisis in which medical professionals had to learn about a pathogen even as they battled it, and initially knew little about how it was transmitted.
And Hale said those kinds of unknowns are the most challenging part of facing COVID-19."
