Selected Podcast

Supporting our Community During the Pandemic

During the pandemic people often ask, "What can I do to help?"  Marlee will discuss ways we can support both Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital and our larger community.
Supporting our Community During the Pandemic
Featured Speaker:
Marlee Lauffer
Marlee Lauffer is president of the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital Foundation and vice president of marketing and communications for Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.
Transcription:

Melanie Cole (Host):  Welcome to It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole and I invite you to listen as we discuss ways to support the community during the pandemic. People often ask what can I do to help? Well, today we're going to find that out. Joining me is Marlee Lauffer. She's the President of the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital Foundation and Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.

Marlee, it's a pleasure to have you join us today. So, in these unprecedented times, please start by telling us how you're doing and how have your staff been handling times that are just so stressful for so many.

Marlee Lauffer (Guest): Oh, well, thank you, Melanie, for the opportunity and for asking that question. Right now, all of our Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital team members, especially those who are on the frontline of patient care are working, I would say heroically, to provide safe and high quality care. And I think what is awesome to me is their commitment, which is just ongoing during both the routine and the emergency health care needs that our community has.

And particularly during the dramatic challenges of COVID-19. Like all of us, our healthcare team, from every aspect of our hospital, including our physicians, are dealing with the same things everybody in the country is dealing with. You know, kids not in school, restrictions on seeing family or friends, changing of life in terms of things we're used to, going to the movies or sports events. And so on top of all that, they are also dealing with what has been an extremely stressful environment in healthcare. And I think they've all have risen to the occasion.

Host: Well, I love that you used the word heroic because it could not describe the healthcare community better in these days. Wow. I'm just, I'm blown away every single day. So, I'd like you to tell us what you want the community to do to help. What you would like them to know. Give us some of your best tips for safely helping their community during this pandemic, helping the health care workers, helping their neighbors, helping Henry Mayo. What would you like them to know?

Marlee: Well, there are a number of things. And I think at this point in the pandemic, the community knows what we all have to do in terms of masking, in terms of social distancing, in terms of keeping ourselves and our friends and neighbors safe. Fortunately, we're at a point where things are improving. There is hope at the end of the tunnel.

And one of the things that's giving us a lot of hope is vaccinations. So, the County of Los Angeles is rolling out vaccinations under state guidelines and Henry Mayo Hospital is proud to be a partner in vaccinating our community. So, if you are eligible for a vaccination, we encourage you to consider getting one. And we have all the information about that on our website. The other thing that I think the community can do and actually has been doing, is to thank our healthcare workers. We are so appreciative of the various ways that the community has shown their gratitude. One of those ways has been dropping off food or snacks for our healthcare workers and actually the Foundation Office that I run has become sort of a quasi food station and we've been gratefully accepting a variety of donations and then working to get it on the floors of our various units.

Other ways that the community can help is by supporting it's community hospital. Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital is a not for profit institution. We are a standalone hospital, so we're not part of a larger system that we can draw upon resources. We take care of ourselves and our community. And we do that with wonderful partnerships from various businesses and individuals who are generous with their philanthropy. So, we encourage anyone in the community who is able to do so to please consider making a charitable contribution to Henry Mayo Hospital and you can do it through our website, Henrymayo.com and the giving section and a variety of different ways that you could participate philanthropically with us.

And then I think finally, another way that the community can help us is to take care of themselves. We know that a lot of people postponed healthcare during the pandemic. They chose to stay home or chose not to come into their doctor's office or their hospital for a variety of reasons. But we are committed to providing a very safe environment for people that need to take care of healthcare needs. So, we encourage you to visit your doctor and schedule any routine or preventative surgeries or procedures, to get your mammograms, to go to the emergency room if you're not feeling well, to go to physical therapy, if that would be beneficial to you because the healthier our community is, the better it is for everyone.

Host: Beautifully said, and you do have an amazing hospital. As the host of the podcast, I know you have some incredibly exciting technology there. So, I agree with you completely. Now Marlee, what would you like to tell your staff, the community about your feelings for how they've been during this pandemic? Share what you'd like to say to all the individuals and businesses that have donated so generously to the hospital during the pandemic and to the patients and the staff that have worked so hard to keep the community safe.

Marlee: Thank you for that opportunity. To our staff, and again, our staff ranges from our IT team to our housekeeping team, engineering team, clinical team, respiratory therapists, physicians, nurses of all different skill levels, you name it. It is across the gamut. And it includes all the administrative support, including our marketing team and our foundation team that provide assistance so that our healthcare team can do their primary job.

And to the healthcare team, I used the word hero before and I'll use it again. It is nothing short of amazing. Particularly in the height of the pandemic, the number of extra shifts many of our nurses and physicians had to pick up, the amount of detailed work that had to be done. The very serious patients that we were dealing with. I'm truly filled with gratitude towards our healthcare team and everyone who's employed at the hospital.

To our community supporters, all I can say is, wow. There were several weeks there were the generosity was never ending. People were dropping off in the early days, various PPE, personal protective equipment that they had, or they acquired to make sure we had enough. Again, they were dropping off food and snacks and drinks and entire meals for particularly the COVID unit, which could not leave once they came into work. They couldn't leave again until their shift was over.

And the generosity was really, spectacular and greatly appreciated. Also again, with just generous donations to the hospital because, while the hospital was full, it was not necessarily financially, rewarding to our bottom line with all the extra efforts that we had to do with PPE, with building a tent outside of the ER, so we could isolate and test patients, to all the extra staffing that we had to do. So, again, the philanthropy was very important and appreciated. And then to our community, this is a very clear close knit community that supports each other. And the hospital feels that. And again, just we are full of gratitude.

Host: So, as we wrap up and what a wonderful podcast, this was. It really, I can hear in your voice, how you feel about your staff and the community at large, really, and how everyone has had to pull together. I mean, that's really what it's been all about. We've had to pull together. So, as we wrap up, what would you like to say about the stress that we're all feeling, the light at the end of the tunnel that you mentioned, please reiterate and reassure what you're doing at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital to keep the community safe. Why this continuum of care is more important than ever. And what you would like listeners to know about that light at the end of the tunnel.

Marlee: Well, what we say at Henry Mayo is that we are dedicated to making sure you are safe in our care. And when we say that, it's more than a slogan, there's a lot of effort that has gone into it. We make sure that we have safety protocols in every one of our areas, following all the CDC and state department of public health guidelines. And again, that includes masking. It includes social distancing. It includes limiting visitors in some cases, or limiting the number of people in a lobby or in a waiting area. Obviously, sanitation is always a top priority at any medical institution and particularly here at Henry Mayo. And our staff is trained and prepared to make sure that everyone truly is safe in our care.

We do, now that the pandemic is starting to hopefully, decline in terms of severity and number of positive cases, we are worried about the community's mental health. We worry about the country's mental health. It is a very stressful time for everyone, whether you're a caregiver or a community member. We've all been hit by it. So, we are working to provide a variety of self-help and mental health guidelines that we'll offer virtually through our community education program, offer on our website, and partner with other organizations in the community to make sure that all of us have the tools that we might need as we continue on in this just very different and challenging time. And then of course I mentioned the vaccine clinic. We are one of the many partners in the region that are offering vaccines and we're grateful that more vaccination opportunities are being rolled out every day.

So, we'd love for people to come to Henry Mayo to get their vaccinations if they're eligible under the current tier system. But we also know that the day is coming where they will be widely available, either through giant distribution centers like Magic Mountain or Dodger Stadium or from you know, neighborhood drug stores and grocery stores. We do think the vaccination is important and we encourage those who are interested to consider it. It's a great way for us to try and get things back to a more pre-pandemic state.

Host: Thank you so much Marlee for joining us today, such an informative and hopeful episode this was. Thank you again. And to learn more about how you can support your local community hospital, please visit Henrymayo.com/foundation. And that concludes this episode of It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.

If you have concerns about COVID, we encourage you to check the Henry Mayo website at henrymayo.com and click on the virus link at the top of the page for more information. Be sure to share this show with your friends and family, because that way we can all learn together from the experts at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital, how to support our community and the hospital together so that they can keep us safe. I'm Melanie Cole.