Spotlight on: COVID-19 Screening Team
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If you have visited the Leever Cancer Center in the last year, you’ve met our screening team, which greets all visitors and verifies that they are safe to enter the facility.
The screening team, which consists of staff members from the Leever Cancer Center, the Smilow Cancer Hospital, and Trinity Health of New England, not only checks everyone’s temperature and ensures that they are not showing symptoms of COVID-19, but they also:
- Explain to visitors why they are being screened.
- Verify that visitors have not traveled recently or been exposed to an infected person.
- Answer all questions related to Leever’s COVID-19 policies.
- Meet regularly to discuss screening policies, issues, challenges, and opportunities for improvement.
“The screening schedule is determined by our screening leadership group, which makes sure someone is always in position at the front door, whether it’s a nurse, a medical assistant, or a member of our clinical or front office staff,” explains Deborah Parkinson, Operations Director at the Leever Center. “They have been doing a great job screening everyone who comes here.”
One of the most difficult parts of the screener’s job is explaining Leever’s policy regarding who can accompany patients for appointments. Each practice supplies the screening team with a list of people who are authorized to accompany patients into the building. It can be confusing for some patients who rely on friends, family members, or caregivers to drive them to their appointments and expect to be allowed to bring them inside, but because our patients are especially vulnerable, we have to be extremely careful not to put them at risk by letting too many people into the facility.
Fortunately, our staff is ready and willing to do whatever is required to help our patients feel safe and give them the support and assistance they need. For example, our valet, John, will often notify us when someone needs help in the parking lot, and will accompany people with limited mobility to the door and into the facility, where staff members will ensure they get to their appointment safely.
For more than a year, our COVID-19 screening team has gone above and beyond to help our patients and keep us all safe; please join us in thanking them for their dedication and care!