COVID-19 GGH Update April 17
How to give feedback
- Speak to your manager or director
- Ask your leader to bring forward an idea or concern to the COVID-19 Incident Management Team
- covidquestions@gghorg.ca
- What’s on your mind? (only works if you’re within the hospital)
Click to the section you want to read
Action/must read (0)
What’s New? (3)
Resources and Supplies (2)
Staff Support (2)
Policy Changes (0)
Notes & Comments (0)
Starting with the positive…
Just a reminder it’s free Tim’s Day for staff with their first name starting with the letters D-I.
Reporting on COVID-19 activity in staff and patients
| Total number of staff tested to date | 204 |
| Total number of staff with a positive test result to date | 26 |
| Total number of staff with a negative test result to date | 163 |
| Total number of results pending | 15 |
| Number of current in-patients who have tested positive | 7 |
| # staff who tested positive and are now recovered | 14 |
Action/Must read
What’s new?
Limit placed on places of employment
On April 15, the provincial government issued an order that restricts employees who have a job with a long-term care employer from working at multiple long-term care locations or at other health service providers including hospitals and retirement homes.
Before 5 p.m. today, if you work in long-term care, you must inform your long-term care employer you also work at the Hospital or any other health service provider including a retirement home. By 12:01 a.m. April 22, you must have chosen just one location to work at. If you choose to work at your long-term care employer, please contact Human Resources, Alison Adamson at AAdamson@gghorg.ca, or extension 2809 in order to be provided with an unpaid leave of absence from Guelph General Hospital for the duration of this order.
Return to Work process
As you know, we have had a number of staff test positive for COVID-19. The good news is that many have recovered and back to work or ready to come back to work. This return process is guided by documents from Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health Unit and Ontario Health,
Basically, there are two ways a worker can return to work:
The test-based approach:
The employee has two consecutive NP swabs, collected at least 24 hours apart, that are both negative for COVID-19
The non-test-based approach:
· 14 days have passed since the onset of the first symptom
· The individual is not fevered
· The individual’s symptoms are improving
Guelph General Hospital is using the non-test based approach in clearing employees to return to work. As a reminder, employees need to contact Employee Health Services prior to returning to work to be cleared.
Discharging patients from Hospital to either long-term care or retirement homes put on hold
From Ontario Health: “To protect the residents of long-term care homes and retirement homes across Ontario, we are asking Ontario hospitals to temporarily stop transferring patients to long-term care and retirement homes. This action builds on the government’s COVID-19 Action Plan for Protecting Long-Term Care Homes that was released today.” For more details, click here.
Resources and Supplies
How PPE conservation improves our “days on hand”
PPE supplies are closely monitored at GGH and across the province. Our teams in Purchasing and Stores do a great job ensuring staff have the correct healthcare-grade PPE they need to be safe at work. And, we have seen the positive results of everyone implementing the PPE conservation measures currently in place. These have a major effect on our inventory “days on hand” – a measure of how many of a particular item we have, divided by how many we use each day.
Our PPE includes:
- N95
- Procedure Masks
- Protective Eye Glasses
- Face Shields
- Isolation Gowns
- Gloves
Right now, we have a supply level of greater than 10 days for each of these. However without conservation measures, this will change quickly. For example, before conservation, we had a 30 day supply of procedure masks. Now that conservation methods are in place, that supply will last 96 days at its current rate of usage. Your continued support when it comes to safely using and conserving PPE is greatly appreciated – it makes an incredible difference!
Wearing hospital garb and PPE outside the hospital
Thank you for doing a good job in in PPE conservation as this will help insure we have the supplies needed for all. However, it has been noted that some bad habits have formed that put people at risk for infection and impact our supplies.
Some staff are wearing masks outside, hospital scrubs are being taken home and gowns are being worn for comfort, not for infection control reasons. There are very few circumstances during which any hospital garb is to be worn outside the building. With the relentless pressures on our PPE supply, we ask all of you to please use PPE for intended purposes.
We’re all in this together and anyone can speak up when we see poor PPE use. In the end, we all benefit.
Staff Support
Honouring those marked by COVID-19
On or around 11:00 a.m. today there will be a minute of silence “for all workers to pray or reflect, in recognition of those who have passed away from COVID-19, the work of all health care workers, those who are off due to COVID-19 and the people we care for.” Switchboard will make an overhead announcement.
Help with your Taxes
As a small token of appreciation, CPAs across the province want to contribute their professional expertise to help prepare frontline healthcare workers’ 2019 taxes. In keeping with social distancing guidelines, there will be no face-to-face meetings – CPAs will receive all documentation electronically. For all the details, click here.
Don’t forget about all the other supports available to staff including mental health services.