Profiles in courage

Several years before he was elected President of the United States, John F. Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage, a collection of biographies about eight US Senators who demonstrated great bravery and integrity while doing work they believed to be essential to the preservation of our Union. There have been many such stories of courage among our present and former colleagues over the past two months. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when fear was plentiful and facts were few, an email was sent to a subset of departments in the North Valley inviting physicians to be trained for work with the ER and HBS teams in the event of a surge. A small group of volunteers signed up at a time when there was a legitimate concern that Kaiser Permanente would face an onslaught of critically ill COVID-19 patients similar to what was seen in Wuhan, Italy, and New York. Alyn Kelley, AFM, and Wenny Jean, AFM were part of the first wave of redeployed physicians. Wenny recently sent this report along with the photo seen below: “This is my awesome Roseville Medical Center HBS Surge training team. Alyn and I shadowed our HBS team leader, Shafia Khan, the first day and were then were assigned an increased load throughout the week. I carried three complex patients, rounded daily, and discharged one patient today. I felt the care we delivered was really second to none and I am so proud of being a Permanente physician and part of this strong team. I am grateful for Kaiser Permanente and this opportunity to contribute in some small way to this bigger global pandemic.” Demonstrating a similar “can do” spirit, a group of retired TPMG colleagues that includes Pete Oftedahl, Jeff Dubois, Katie Rutherford, and Charlie Moore all volunteered to staff the COVID-19 field hospital at Sleep Train Arena. Reports Pete, “While this was in the planning stages, the California department of health sent messages to health care providers in the state asking for volunteers for the California Health Corps (CHC) - to serve as doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, EMT's at these facilities. They also asked whether you might be willing to go out of state - if another state's needs exceeded ours. 80,000 responded. In our area we wound up getting about 35 physicians interested, but when we started on April 17, there were only 27 and now we're down to just 12.” Click here for more details from Pete and Jeff about their Sleep Train experience and ongoing desire to be of service to others following their retirement from TPMG.