As I put on my homemade mask to keep myself, my family, and my neighbors safe, I am reminded of the discipline and vigilance that this caregiver (above) draws upon every day as she dons her mask at work. Her goal: to protect the safety of her patients and herself at Spaulding Rehabilitation Network and Partners HealthCare at Home.
Called into demanding new roles and longer shifts, our entire network of doctors, nurses, therapists, care assistants, and staff are still as focused and positive as ever. At the end of a long weekend of preparations to open the first of two new 60-bed COVID-19 units at Spaulding, you could hear spontaneous exclamations in the staff meeting:
“We’re good!” “We got this!”
and
“Spaulding Strong!”
But make no mistake. The intense pressures of the pandemic on our rehabilitation network— from Charlestown, to Cambridge, to Cape Cod and Brighton, to the emergency outpatient and home visits—are relentless.
Just as our Spaulding and Partners HealthCare at Home (PHH) caregivers are looking out for all our patients in recovery during this brutal pandemic, so must we must look out for them—our healthcare heroes.
That is why we created the
Emergency Response Fund
—to ensure that our Spaulding/PHH leaders have flexible resources to tackle the increasingly complex medical needs of all our patients and the very real but less visible needs of our rehabilitation staff.