Protecting the Most Vulnerable

I think you’ll find this account of a nursing home in Baltimore that has protected its residents from COVID-19 enlightening. From the Dan Rodricks at the Baltimore Sun:

“So we already had procedures in place for dealing with infections,” Reverend DeWitt says. “The next thing we did was eliminate residents going out unless it was for a crucial medical procedure. All employees who were not involved in direct care were told to stay home and work from there if they could. I personally have not been [inside the nursing home] for 11 weeks.”

The home stocked up quickly on extra masks, gloves and gowns. DeWitt scheduled his janitors so that the nursing home received thorough cleanings day and night. He asked each staff member involved in the care of residents to limit travel and contact with their family members. On reporting for work, staffers had to fill out a questionnaire about their outside activities and health conditions. “And we took their temperature three times a day,” DeWitt says.

Masks were dispensed to all the residents. Community meals were eliminated, and residents ate in their rooms. Employees were provided food so they would not have to go out for lunch or dinner. Rooms with one television and two residents got a second TV to help meet social distancing.

The nursing home hired an extra activities coordinator to visit with residents, coach them through daily exercises, play board games with them or take them for walks. This was particularly important because, says DeWitt, up to half of his residents have no relatives who visit them, and he was concerned they would feel even more isolated during the pandemic.

DeWitt and his staff did all this before seeing directives from government agencies. “We didn’t wait for guidance from the Centers for Disease Control or from the Maryland Department of Health or from Baltimore City,” he says. “We did what we thought was prudent at the very beginning of the pandemic.”

“Porch visits” are allowed—visits by relatives or friends in which the resident remains on the porch while the visitors remain on the sidewalk for or five yards away. There have been no cases of COVID-19 among the residents. The nursing home is small and this is completely anecdotal but I think the measures put in place were prudent and indicative of the things that should have been done one a much larger scale, especially the proactive stance. I have also read accounts of nursing home in which the staff sheltered in place right along with the residents from the earliest days of the pandemic. Handling difficult situations prudently is hard sometimes.