The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged hospitals in numerous ways, including leadership and internal decision-making. Everyone had to figure out how to make unprecedented decisions and communicate these operational changes to their staff, patients and families.
This has been a transformational moment for healthcare providers, and instead of working inside our own silos, we believe that this can also be an important moment of sharing, education and support.
With that in mind, we would like to share some of what we have done at Craig Hospital since the start of the pandemic. Our systems are a work in progress as we continue to evolve and adjust to the demands that the pandemic places on us, but there are a few things that we feel we got right.
- Our work was grounded in Craig’s mission.
Before we could really move forward with our pandemic response strategies, like our Incident Command team and infection prevention measures, we needed to ground ourselves in a purpose. Our mission is to provide exceptional patient and family-centered care with bravery and unyielding determination, so our decision-making was centered around creating the environment for providing the best-possible care and encouraging forthright and courageous conversations. - Our decisions were values-infused.
Once we were grounded in our mission, we also mapped out the values we could turn to in this constantly evolving crisis. Our Incident Command team identified five key values: Safety, Equity, Fairness, Trust, Sustainability. We were venturing into uncharted territory as a team, and these values played a vital role in everything from the debates and problem,-solving in our daily Incident Command meetings to the design of our decision trees. - We didn’t forget about humor.
After a few months of the pandemic had passed, we recognized that (understandably) humor had been missing from our pandemic communications, and humor is an essential component of Craig’s culture. Like all hospitals, our sense of community had taken a hit from social distancing and restricted family visitation, so we recommitted to finding ways to embrace our culture while still respecting COVID precautions. Among other things, this led to some smile-inducing public health signage around campus.
To date, there have been no cases of COVID-19 at Craig Hospital, and so we hope that with hard work, focus and values-led collaborative decisions, we will keep it that way.
By Julie Negron and Melissa Broudy. Julie is the Craig Hospital Safety Officer and Emergency Manager, and Melissa is the Infection Prevention/Control Manager.
