Ideas That Work: Helping Hand

Even if your facility isn’t on the frontlines of the battle to combat COVID-19, you can still find ways to join in and help. For our temporarily shuttered surgery center, that meant volunteering to serve as the main PPE donation site for our local community hospital and asking for donations in our local paper, on Facebook and on various webpages. On Wednesdays from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., two members of our staff accept PPE donations — masks, gloves, eye protection and gowns — from people who called ahead to let us know they were donating. After receiving the donations, the two staff members remove the items from the bags and boxes in which they came and transfer them to our facility’s waiting room area. Here, another member of our team examines the PPE to make sure it’s usable, labels it and places it in a plastic bag. Finally, the bagged PPE donations are moved to a storage area and added to our running inventory count. On a weekly basis, we report our totals to leaders at the community hospital who decide how much they need. We also developed a distribution-tracking system, so we know exactly what items have been used and what items remains in our inventory.

Nadine Calloway Reese, RN, BSN, CCRN, TNCC
Kona Ambulatory Surgery Center
Kailua-Kona, Hawaii
[email protected]