December - 20208Permit me to start by stating the obvious. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined leading I cardiac diagnostic Department of 90+ involved employees through a modern-day pandemic; but that is what we faced. The Wellstar Kennestone Cardiac Diagnostics department consists of an inpatient noninvasive cardiology lab as well as five outpatient cardiac diagnostics centers and two cardiac rehabilitation centers. As a leader through this event, there is a twofold approach that you must prepare for. The first is that you must manage your team leaders and keep them prepared so that they can get through each day. The second is to continually round on the front-line staff to make sure that they are comfortable in their current work environment and that their needs are met. When facing a situation like this, it is difficult to make any long-range plans. Therefore, short-term becomes the priority. Initially, you plan to get through to the end of the day. Then you try to set weekly goals. In the early stages of pandemic, we learned very quickly that there is absolutely no sense to make plans much longer than that. A recurring hurdle is trying to maintain enough staffing to stay operational. Even though we are all health care workers, that does not mean that your employees do not have OPERATIONAL ISSUES WITHIN CARDIAC SERVICE LINES DURING A PANDEMICTony Gallagher, Director of Noninvasive Cardiology, Wellstar Kennestone HospitalByIn My Opinion
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