FROM THE FRONT LINES
Doctor details COVID-19 impact on staff, system
Dr. Jessica Summerfield is fastidious — almost obsessive — with taking precautions for COVID-19, and she credits those measures with so far protecting her from contracting the virus that recently broke out at Windsor Regional Hospital.
But the one thing she couldn't insulate herself from was the stress and anxiety resulting from her colleagues becoming ill.
Summerfield was just ending a seven-day, 24-hours-a-day, on-call shift when she learned there was an outbreak at the Ouellette campus.
And although she was exposed to patients with COVID-19, finding out colleagues tested positive for the virus felt different.
“Once it's kind of infiltrated into the staff (it's) a very different sense of exposure,” said Summerfield, a family doctor and hospitalist at Windsor Regional and president of the Essex County Medical Society.
“These are your colleagues, these are your friends, these are your people, this is my home floor. So it becomes ever more palpable that we've almost been penetrated.
“At that moment you hear a fellow team member ... has been infected, then you immediately feel that this is a member of your family, that we're all at risk, what's going to happen?”
Her concern then turned to her own family and herself.
“I found myself just retracing all of my steps. Did I break procedure? Did I follow all the necessary precautions?” she said.
“I go through the same steps every single time I enter the hospital,” Summerfield said.
“That starts when I go into the parking lot. I put on a new mask, I sanitize my hands, I go through the screening process.
“And then when I enter the hospital office, I wipe everything down. I obviously change into scrubs. I do it completely robotically after being in this now for eight or nine months.
“Because if I keep doing the same thing over and over again and it hasn't yet failed, that's telling me that's it's working.
“That's really what this exposure had highlighted for me — that all of the protocols that we have in place, and even myself personally, are working,” she said.
Summerfield said she checked in with everyone at the hospital as much as possible during the outbreak, which has now ended, to make sure staff were reminded about access to peer and support groups, and to check on patients.
But she also worried about the hospital system and the repercussions of an outbreak, the effects of closing a floor or possibly closing the hospital to admissions.
The outbreak meant some patients needed to be diverted to other hospitals in Leamington or Chatham. And not allowing any visitors put an added strain on health-care workers.
“It also speaks even to the further ripple effect with the community spread,” she said. “What does it mean if we have to cancel surgeries again? Will we add to the pandemic backlog?”
Dealing with COVID-19 feels different than dealing with other contagious or communicable diseases health-care professionals regularly face, said Summerfield, and she attributes that to how limited the treatment options are for patients with the virus.
“You give them oxygen and it's almost a Hail Mary,” she said. “From a medical point of view, it seems very simple to treat.
“Give them some steroids, some oxygen, prone them. These are all things we know help. But outside of that, there's nothing much more to it.
“The problem becomes the volume and the complexity of resource allocation for these patients.”
Will there be enough respirators, enough staff, enough beds to deal with an influx of patients?
“That becomes the most challenging aspect of COVID.”
Summerfield said that's why it's so important for everyone to follow the pandemic guidelines.
“We know that the virus is everywhere in the community. Every outing is a potential for exposure,” she said.
“So even with my own personal experience, I know that the protocols that I've done have worked. They're very simple.
“You wash your hands, wear a mask, physically distance, and downloading the COVID alert app is a fantastic intervention, particularly when our public health co-workers are so overwhelmed.”
To download the COVID alert app, visit the app store connected to your mobile phone. It's free, confidential and will notify the user of an exposure to someone who has tested positive for the virus.