Page 18 - August

“The rules on what is safe have changed almost daily,” she says. “Over time, we will need to
adjust to a new normal. Things probably won’t go back to how they were before. We need to
be highly diligent about using standard precautions and PPE.”

Moving forward, Reingold says workload is slowly ramping back up. The key will be finding a way
to manage cases while reducing stress.

“We will now need to double- and triple-book in order to catch back up on all the back
orders,” she says. “We have been down some staff who have needed to take mandatory sick

time or self-quarantine due to suspected virus exposure, which increases workload on the rest
of the staff.”

Rose says Upper Valley Medical Center was hit particularly hard with COVID-19 cases, due to
their close proximity to two nursing homes that had large numbers of cases. However, they
train for emergency types of environments and were able to establish isolation areas, following
guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That said, there is no single

guideline for managing staff stress.

“With communitywide closures, our techs were working long hours here, then going home,
where they are parents and teachers, with schools closed,” she says. “They’re feeling the stress
everywhere.”

Deitte says it’s important to be flexible and creative with scheduling, not only for safety but to
help staff deal with the changes to their daily lives brought on by the pandemic on the home
front. Developing new shifts or workday schedules is just one example of how staff with

childcare needs can keep their families in order and maintain their work life—a new form of
work-life integration.

“We needed to be flexible, to pivot in a short amount of time,” she says. “We can learn from
our recent experiences and implement change where needed in the future.”

— Kathy Hardy is a freelance writer based in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. She is a frequent contributor to Radiology Today.