08.26.20 COVID-19 Briefing Live Stream Transcript

The County of Santa Clara
August 26, 2020
Live Stream - Briefing Live stream
10:00am PT

Corina Herrera Loera: Good morning and welcome to facebook live with the county of santa clara my name is Corina Herrera Loera as you can see we'll be taking off our masks just during the segment so you can understand what we're saying and we can have our translators see our our mouth as we're speaking today uh public hospitals have been continued to continue to respond with COVID-19 pandemic we will be discussing how county-owned public hospitals and clinics continue to prepare and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and what they have learned jill sprout to sprout today is a chief nursing officer at the santa clara county valley medical center and she will be joining us this morning to discuss hospital operations thank you jill for being here today i know it's busy times at the vmc.

Jill Sproul: yes

CHL: I can imagine

JS:Yes it is

CHL: So uh we're going to go ahead and um begin with our first question to you um what are you doing now in response to the pandemic there at VMC

JS: Well actually we've been doing a lot over the past six months and we continue to work aggressively to combat this virus and this pandemic we are working really closely with the county's eoc to make sure we have the proper supplies equipment in addition to our surge planning to make sure we have enough critical care beds medical surgical beds and staff to provide high quality care to our patients we have also continued to learn more about the virus and in addition to our county the entire country and world we're learning how to provide better care for these patients we have also made some structural changes at our public hospitals and now we're providing video and televisions which is something that we had to implement rather quickly so patients can safely see their providers and not necessarily have to come to the hospital if if not needed we are back online with all of our operating rooms our elective cases our procedures so we are making sure that people that need care whether it's because they are COVID positive or for all other non-COVID procedures and operations our operating rooms continue to be open um all week long for emergencies and for elective cases and i think one important thing that we're really doing is every single day we are assessing the situation monitoring all the dashboards and looking at the trends up or down and also our hospital capacity our ventilators our critical care beds and we continue to watch this very closely

CHL: Thank you Jill and i think you answered a couple of things because i'm sure a lot has shifted from six months ago but are there any other uh things that have shifted in the hospitals from six months ago how things were being done to how they're being done now?

JS: Yes we have um one of the first things we've done at all three hospitals is we've put up triage tents so when patients come in or it used to be they would come in our our um emergency department waiting room but now we can quickly assess patients for any um what we call ili symptoms influenza-like symptoms and keep people segregated so we can provide so there's not any mixing of patients and so we have four tents at VMC st louise also has a tent and so does o'connor so this has helped us be able to quickly triage patients we also mandate mandate all visitor and employee screening of temperatures and universal masking so we encourage people patients and visitors to wear a surgical mask and if they come without one we provide them so everyone in the hospital is wearing a mask and we have also changed our  visitor policy so we really need to limit the amount of visitors and i know this has been very hard on families so we are really decreasing the amount of visitors but under special circumstances end of life pediatric patients labor and delivery there are special circumstances we are allowing visitors but again this has been hard on our families and we know that so we are trying to encourage ipads face time and if a patient or family doesn't affect a patient doesn't have a way to communicate we provide the ipad because you know combating isolation is really important for our families we've also instituted a family communication so when people are in the hospital we facilitate communicating what's what's going on with the patients both from our providers and the nursing staff

CHL: Thank you so much for that uh it's very important to be able to connect our families right during that such hard time yes what have you learned and or your staff learned in treating patients with COVID-19 anything special that you've done since you know the beginning to how you're doing things now?

JS: Yes we have learned a lot early on we were very quick to put patients on ventilators but we're using other modalities high flow oxygen and so that's really helped and we're seeing a less of a need for our critical care beds now because we are using the use of steroids and other medications and so early on we had our big surge we had a lot more critical critically ill patients than we're seeing right now so that is helping us with our our ICU capacity and our ability to take other medical emergencies that are non-COVID we are also again using video chats and use of technology and we have are doing a really good job of social distancing and keeping our staff and patients safe when they come to the hospital.

CHL: Thank you we appreciate you we appreciate all the staff that are working hard in our hospitals uh at this time and throughout these hard times um you know and you are not just doing the work but you're also learning as you're going um and implementing new things so we really appreciate that and um in general does a hospital accept transference from other uh locations other counties um can you explain a little bit about that.

JS: Yes we because fortunately we do have capacity at all of our hospitals so we continue to accept our trauma program remains open for pediatric and adult our burn center remains open and so we do get out of county transfers for those two programs but we also if any other part of the state is overwhelmed and does not have enough ICU beds we do have capacity and we would help out our surrounding counties or you know other parts of the the the state um if other hospitals were to be um overwhelmed by critically ill patients we also work with the eoc to um you know be able to facilitate transfers we are here for the community and we are in this together and it's it's been um so inspiring to see the health care workers coming in day after day and as we have gone we're six months into this or like eight i guess six or i don't know what month it is but we because um we've learned so much I see the staff's confidence and level of really knowing how to care for these patients and when i round in the hospital um the people the nurses and the providers taking care of the COIVD patients are very confident and they tell me you know jill we got this we have this and we are here for the community and so it's it's very inspiring to see how we've come together as a county and we've come together as three hospitals and we've also come together for the community to care for these patients.

CHL: Thank you definitely these hard times have really highlighted the heroes of our current times right our nurses our doctors our firemen and our fire women out there working hard during these hard times thank you so much and now can you tell us a little bit why following the public health guidance is so important also in your department.

JS: Yes it's up to all of us to really make sure we decrease the spread of the virus and we do everything to mitigate it which is social distancing wearing face coverings or out in public good hand hygiene wiping down high touch surfaces and not participating in any large gatherings and really it's up to all of us to decrease the spread and by decreasing the spread we are decreasing our hospitalizations our patients that potentially could fall ill critically ill or even pass away so we we want to encourage everyone to follow the health orders and follow all of the guidance to decrease the spread.

CHL: Thank you Jill again for your time and as you mentioned it's important for all of us to continue to follow those orders as you can see we have a six at least a six feet distance from us today i'm ensuring we continue to wear our masks and remember you can continue to tune in every Monday wednesday and friday here at 10 o'clock we'll continue to have people like jill and others from our community to talk about resources and what we're doing in our community to respond to COVID-19 and other issues that come up as they come up and so remember to continue to stay safe keep your families healthy your health we need everybody uh during this time thank you jill again for being on and uh we'll see you on friday at 10 o'clock thank you.

JS: thank you for having me