Skip to main content

menu
URMC / Highland Hospital / Medical Professionals / Physician News / February 2022 / Spotlight on Hospitalists During COVID 19

Spotlight on Hospitalists During COVID 19

“Highland’s hospitalists have been true champions throughout each phase of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Youngrin Kim, M.D., Chief Hospitalist. Early in the pandemic when we were all still learning how to manage COVID, there was no vaccine, and the mortality rate was higher, hospitalists stepped up along with the nursing staff to put themselves at personal risk to care for Highland’s COVID patients. Keely Dwyer-Matzky, M.D., Director of Patient Flow and her team transformed Highland’s Observation Unit into a COVID care unit, and COVID patients not in the ICU were cared for on one unit with a limited number of providers designated to care for them each week to prevent cross floor contamination and promote safety.

“The availability of a vaccine has been a game-changer for us,” said Dr. Kim. “But pandemic variants have made the disease more widespread--Highland even reached a peak of 90 positive patients at one point-so we had to devise more ways to care for these patients and keep staff and others safe.”

Pandemic patients are now cohorted in several units. West 7, under the medical direction of James Nightingale, M.D., is now Highland’s designated COVID unit. Dr. Nightingale leads several quality improvement initiatives there, including hand hygiene and special training for traveling staff to ensure all health care staff is on the same page.

Overflow patients are cared for on West 6, under the medical direction of Dylan Ruebeck, M.D. In addition to working with Jane Kenney, BSN, RN, Senior Nurse Manager to safely partition part of West 6 to be COVID overflow, Dr. Ruebeck has worked to support nursing staff, to help improve efficiency and limit unnecessary exposure.

Under the direction of pulmonologist Serban Staicu, M.D. and Valentin Guset, M.D., FACP, DipABLM, medical director West 5, who also serves as Department of Medicine quality director, stable patients requiring High Flow Nasal Cannula support are being called out of the ICU onto the Hospitalist service to help relieve the workload for the ICU providers.  

“Like everywhere else, COVID has affected Highland staff and their families directly,” said Dr. Kim. “Hospitalists have gone above and beyond to cover for each other. They come in on days off for back up support. They volunteer to be on call. I am super proud of this group who come together day after day as a team. They have become experts on this disease and I would trust any of our Hospitalists in caring for me or my family with any medical diagnosis.”

Hospitalists like Dr. Kim and Dr. Harp help educate providers and caregivers across the hospital as we learn more about the disease each day. Dr. Dwyer-Matzky works with Dr. Kim to plan appropriately by looking at admissions and anticipating the trajectory. Dr. Michael Ferrantino, Associate Chief Hospitalist, works hard every day to make sure we have appropriate staffing.  APPs have been instrumental in care and helped cover shifts whenever needed, day or night.

“Hospital leadership is tremendously supportive of providers and nursing staff,” said Dr. Kim. “We are all in this together. The pandemic has shone a light on the hospitalist model of patient care. It is truly ideal to have core group of expert doctors caring for COVID patients and has limited the exposure of COVID to physicians in our community.”

2/3/2022

You may also like

No related posts found.