St. John's Hospital in Far Rockaway cares for patients and staff

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At times, reporting on the coronavirus pandemic has been reduced to numbers — the number of cases, positivity rates, the number of deaths. At hospitals, including St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, in Far Rockaway, there are many people behind those numbers, from the administrators who run the facility to the doctors and nurses who treat patients.

St. John’s, a 257-bed facility that also serves the Five Towns, has more than 1,500 employees and has treated more than 1,000 Covid-19 patients, including the first recorded case in Queens, in March. In October, as the positivity rate rose, Far Rockaway was part of the state’s restrictive red zone cluster, but early in November, with restrictions lifted, it was designated a yellow zone.

“We know that this was an unprecedented and challenging time for all hospitals throughout the world,” said Renee Hastick-Motes, vice president of external affairs at St. John’s. “At the height of the pandemic, team members put together a Covid-19 report on six different critical areas: communications, resource management, security and safety, staff management, utilities management and patient management. We collected the qualitative information on how well we did managing these throughout the hospital.” The facility’s leadership team added employee mental health and emotional well-being to the report as well.

Hastick-Motes said that the feedback provided the hospital with a guide to improvement. An overlooked area was offerings to staff to rest and relax. The hospital created a wellness initiative that offered employees tai chi, room to walk on site and virtual yoga classes. Department administrators also uploaded videos to thank their staffs for their work. “We can’t talk of taking care of people if we don’t take care of our team members,” Hastick-Motes said. “We do believe we are more prepared now than in March.”

Since then, so much has been learned about the virus and how to treat patients, according to Dr. Donald Morrish, the hospital’s chief medical officer. “I think the entire medical community learned infinitively more,” he said. “Back in March, we were getting daily updates from the New York State Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control on best practices. In the Rockaways, we not only treat people who are more susceptible to Covid, but are more susceptible because of health care disparities. We specifically learned tremendously more on best practices, and in partnership with the nursing staff, best practices ensures patients receive the highest level of care.”

Lin Zabala, assistant vice president of nursing, said that training videos helped the nurses treat Covid patients, and eased their anxieties about working with an infectious disease so they could go home to their families with less stress. “Every nurse in St. John’s is basically working on helping the patient, and there is an emotional investment in how to make our patients well,” Zabala said. “Our responsibility is that patients are comfortable so that the family is comfortable. Bedside nursing is making sure the patient is not alone.”

The hospital uses technology such as “tele-sitters,” cameras mounted on rolling poles that provide live video and audio from patients’ rooms. If a patient is having a problem, the monitoring clinician can broadcast a message to the room and notify staff.
Hospital employees have taken the time to educate community members on how to protect themselves, ranging from the latest information from the CDC and the state Health Department to the use of personal protective equipment.

In March, St. John’s, and hospitals around the state, were ordered by Cuomo to boost their bed capacity by 50 percent. Now with cases on the rise again, the hospital is preparing not only for another influx of patients, but also for the coming vaccine.
“Right now we’re creating communication to educate team members,” Hastick-Motes said.

The pandemic, Morrish said, is the type of health crisis that doctors train for. “We are well prepared, well organized and we have a high level of confidence that we have good support,” he said. “We have the backing of elected officials and the backing of talented, smart people, and we are well prepared to address a second wave.”

Zabala said that the nurses have their hearts in their work, and that patients can see the teamwork of the medical staff. “The nurses depend on the doctors, and we all work together,” she said. “We have the mission within ourselves to charge head-on, and we have the support of the organization.”

Have an opinion on Covid-related health issues? Send letters to jbessen@liherald.com.