Navigating the Covid-19 Pandemic by Caring for Our Health Care Workforce as They Care for Our Patients

Abstract

Summary Leaders at Stanford Medicine, located in one of the first U.S. communities to be affected by Covid-19, quickly realized that they were not prepared to meet the escalating needs of their clinical and operational workforce. The pandemic would require existing care-delivery structures across the academic medical system to be expanded and aligned to prioritize workforce protection. Leaders identified an approach driven by connection, collaboration, and caring. They created specialized teams to develop a systemwide Occupational Health service with practices and procedures to assess health care workers and begin robust Covid-19 polymerase chain reaction testing; to centralize operations to maximize utilization of essential clinical and nonclinical staffing resources; to make visible and address psychological safety concerns and basic needs for faculty and staff; to aggressively address personal protective equipment supply chain issues and effectively assess infection risk; and to plan for a safe return of elective procedures and visits.