Bench Building during COVID-19: Creating Capabilities and Training Teams.

Madore, Alicia A; Lopez, Fernando

BACKGROUND Keller Army Community Hospital, a 12-bed community hospital located in the Hudson Valley of New York State, within the pandemic epicenter anticipated the surge of critically ill patients, which would overwhelm local resources during the coronavirus pandemic sweeping across the globe. In this facility, there were no Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds and resources were mobilized in order to create a negative pressure Corona Virus Unit (CVU) consisting of seven ICU beds and two step-down beds. Although the creation of the CVU decreased the non-COVID inpatient capacity to five beds, the hospital also formulated a plan to expand overall bed capacity from 12 inpatient beds to 45 beds within 24 hours. OBJECTIVE To create a ICU embedded within a CVU and implement a three day curriculum to prepare four mixed teams of critical care and non-critical care staff nurses to manage critically ill patients with the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). METHODS Nursing leaders and hospital education staff developed a critical care curriculum utilizing Elsevier didactic, the DoD COVID-19 Practice Guide, and hands-on training for 34 nurses.1,2 Nurses had varied scope of practice levels from licensed practical nurses to advance practice nurses, with diverse critical care expertise to non-critical care nursing staff from the primary care medical home (PCMH), all of which participated in the cross-leveling to the CVU unit during the pandemic response. Educational elements included PPE donning and doffing, mechanical ventilation, central venous catheter maintenance, arterial catheter management, hemodynamics, and critical care pharmacotherapy. A medical model skills station with common critical care equipment such as ventilators allowed for instantaneous feedback and 13 hands-on skills training. RESULTS A fully functional ICU and CVU was created with thirty-four nurses who completed training within seven days with a didactic completing rate of 94.65 % and 100% hands-on skills. The program endures with monthly tailored re-fresher training to improve efficiency and maintain critical competencies. The team maintained operational readiness through the surge and remain resolute for the next surge. CONCLUSIONS On-going program execution and evaluation continues to develop new staff members due to permanent change of station, recent on-boarding, or because of evidence based clinical guideline changes. Training has continued, but shifted to include normal inpatient operations over the summer of 2020. Re-fresher classes covering the treatment and care of COVID patients continue with the anticipation of a second wave surge of COVID-19 cases emerges this fall based on epidemiology predictions.