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St. Luke's reassigns staff to help fight coronavirus

As an anesthesiologist, Dr. Hubsmith would typically be in the operating room but now finds himself in the ICU helping intubate COVID-19 patients.

BOISE, Idaho — Nationwide, doctors, nurses and other emergency room staff are facing a shortage of personal protective equipment as hospitals are inundated with COVID-19 patients.

Like many other hospitals, St. Luke's has canceled all elective surgeries to preserve its supply of personal protective equipment.

"As a result of that, we have had some significant decreases in volume in staff that are available to do other duties in order to get their work hours," said Brie Sandow, St. Luke's Director of the Enterprise Resource and Staffing Center of Excellence.

Sandow says the St. Luke's has created a workforce repository to reassign these skilled workers to other areas where they are needed most.

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"Some of the things that we have staffed through the repository are the testing tents and we have pop-up pharmacies in the parking lots of the hospitals to prevent unnecessary movement throughout the hospital and those are staffed with runners," said Sandow. "Things like even folding scrubs, we have an increased use of scrubs."

Dr. Lance Hubsmith is one of the employees at St. Luke's whose duties have been shifted.

As an anesthesiologist, Dr. Hubsmith would typically be in the operating room but now finds himself in the ICU helping intubate COVID-19 positive patients.

"We do routinely do intubations and therefore anesthesia providers are experts in intubating patients," Dr. Hubsmith said.

Dr. Hubsmith says this shift in duties has been a gratifying experience.

"I really believe taking our skill set and utilizing them in these different areas has really helped limit the spread to other providers, staff and patients," Dr. Hubsmith said. "It's a very rewarding process for sure."

And should St. Luke's see a resurgence in COVID-19 patients once Idaho's stay-at-home order is lifted, the hospital is prepared to utilize the workforce repository again.

"It has allowed our staff to really come together in an all-hands-on-deck way to support and contribute to the new efforts that we have in place due to COVID-19 response," Sandow said.

Gretchen Parsons is an anchor, reporter and producer at KTVB since 2016. You can follow her on Instagram @gretchenparsonsKTVB or  @gretchenKTVB on Twitter.

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