‘We had to just get through it,’ says HFM’s chief nursing officer, Tom Veeser on getting through COVID-19’s biggest surge
By: Alisa M. Schafer Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter
MANITOWOC – Even before the coronavirus pandemic started, Tom Veeser’s job as Holy Family Memorial’s chief nursing officer had him constantly researching and reviewing hospital protocols to make sure both patients and hospital staff were as protected as possible.
Veeser said when the pandemic hit, his job changed from taking weeks to change safety and health protocols to taking mere hours to adapt to the ever-shifting recommendations for treating COVID-19 cases.
Veeser took some time to sit on a call with the Herald Times Reporter and discuss Holy Family Memorial’s vaccination efforts, and to reflect on what it has been like to be in the health care field during the pandemic.
How are things going with the vaccination efforts?
I’m pretty proud of our team. We started planning for vaccinations well before they came out back in November. We were ready to go based on how the vaccinations would come out and the time. There was an awful lot of pre-planning, and we started giving out vaccinations back in December.
Tom Veeser, Chief Nursing Officer, Holy Family Memorial Hospital, Manitowoc, WI
Photo by: Shellie Kappelman Photography
We’ve been in a constant planning mode as the vaccinations have come out. To date, we’ve done more than 11,000 vaccinations. That is, 7,000 people have had their first vaccination and 5,000 have had their first and second. We’re pretty proud of our team and the work they’ve done.
Is there anything you wish more people knew about the vaccine?
I think the biggest concern is — in Manitowoc County, we’re a little better than the national average with 77% of our 65 and older population being vaccinated. Those who are the most at risk with COVID-19 have done the best at getting their vaccinations. But we’re plateauing on the number of people taking the vaccination. There are pockets of a lot of people not opting to get the vaccination.
So, when you ask me what is the one thing we want people to know, it’s that vaccinations have been very effective. They are safe and we should have more people getting the vaccinations. It’s a safe technology and it has been very effective, even on the various strains that are starting to evolve.
Now that we have the vaccines, do you think we’ll be going back to normal anytime soon?
There are things we’ve learned throughout this pandemic that are probably going to influence us positively as we move forward. Masks and handwashing and surface management are very effective. This year has seen the lowest prevalence of influenza. Our pediatrics department has seen the least amount of chronic illnesses like rhinoviruses and rotaviruses. That has been amazing. People with chronic issues would benefit from maintaining these practices.
Time will tell with this pandemic, but when we start seeing extended low prevalence, that’s when we will start to get back to normal. But in the short term, COVID-19 is still prevalent in the community, although hospitalizations and death rates are dropping significantly.
We recently had a 70-year-old hospitalized with COVID-19. They should have already gotten a vaccine, but they didn’t. It was senseless and it breaks your heart to see what they had to go through. What people have to know is that even if they are vaccinated and they happen to pass it on to someone who isn’t, they are still causing a significant illness.
Part of the problem is people don’t see it. They only see people as they are happy and healthy, they don’t see the people they ran into at the grocery store four days later when that person is sick and having to be admitted to the hospital.
When we first spoke about COVID-19 back in February 2020, you said you didn’t think it would be much more serious than influenza. When did you start to realize it was more serious than that?
As we watched New York and Italy, regionally we started changing and getting more serious about prevention because we saw their hospitals and emergency rooms quickly becoming overwhelmed. We experienced a little bit of that in November, but we had more time to be prepared.
Tell me about the surge in cases in Manitowoc County in November 2020.
We had significant amounts of our staff being quarantined during that time, so we had to learn to work through that. We cross-trained some of our staff so they could take over in other areas of the hospital. We had to move respiratory and physical therapy around so we could prepare for where the surge was going to hit us.
We also had to protect our staff. We put up walls, we added negative air pressure to certain rooms to protect our staff as well as other patients. We had to very quickly change protocols both in who were deemed essential workers and how we would protect people who were potentially exposed, but keep them working because there isn’t two of them, and partner across the region to make sure we were all following similar guidelines. We stayed connected regularly with the CDC and brought in our infectious disease experts to ensure we kept the correct resources working, versus getting them quarantined, versus them being off with an illness.
Right as the surge was hitting us, we had convalescent plasma and Remdesivir as our core treatments, but as the surge was hitting us, the monoclonal antibodies were coming out and we had to quickly adapt and get the ability to identify who qualified for monoclonal antibodies and we had to adjust how we would treat them.
So this was a sick person with COVID-19 and we had to bring them into a health care setting and appropriately protect them and the other patients, and then get them started. So a lot of protocol development and setting up of how we would do that. Normally, we would take a week or two or a month to develop a protocol, but we were developing protocols in hours as things came up. It was a rapid transition as we did that.
How did you and the staff handle increased stress levels during that time?
In medical, you can cure, or you can palliatively treat. We couldn’t cure this, we had to just go through it. But we could support the symptoms. So, we supported them (hospital staff) as best as we could, but we had to just get through it.
You have 10 employees, but three are out and you actually need 12, you’ve got to come up with a plan. That’s where we were at. At any given time, we were missing 20% of our workforce and we needed 120%. So, we pulled together as a team and collaborated and had people rerouted to work in different areas and made sure they had support. Being tired didn’t make the patient go away.