SINGAPORE: The team from Tan Tock Seng Hospital and the National Centre for Infectious Diseases has been here before.
In our final interview with Charmaine Manauis, who is part of the team leading efforts at the screening centre, the doctor finally does not look like she is rushing somewhere.We ask her how she feels looking back, now that things have quietened down. While she is usually composed, words fail her at this point.
“The patients wait outside two hours. Inside, we really needed to run,” says senior staff nurse Yu Yong, who volunteered to triage patients at the screening centre the first chance she got. Even with beds already on standby at the NCID, opening a ward is not as simple as it sounds, or looks. The materials management department supported them with supplies, the housekeeping team put up curtains and bedsheets in the wards, and engineers had to make sure the airflows were correct, says her counterpart, NCID nursing director Margaret Soon.
“Very quickly, we activated the drawer plans,” he says. “We don’t want to be reactive, but to be ahead of the signs and signals that are presenting on the ground.”THE PIVOT FROM FRONT LINE TO LAST LINE “Most of the patients, thankfully, didn’t need ICU care. They didn’t need oxygen support. Their symptoms were mild, and generally they recovered uneventfully,” said Vasoo.
But was this all part of TTSH-NCID’s drawer plans? Were they really, as touted, always one step ahead of the pandemic? They were “flexible”, NCID executive director Leo Yi Sin replies with a wry smile. To this end, being able to preserve healthcare capacity for those who require it, by moving patients into community isolation facilities, “enabled to save as many lives as possible”, says TTSH chief executive Eugene Fidelis Soh.
This time, “even in last moment”, family members were not allowed to hold the patient’s hand and say their goodbyes properly. Then, in personal protective equipment and the phone in a Ziploc bag, she takes them to their loved one. They tended to young and old, locals and migrant workers. Most of the time, the patients were intubated for life support.
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