Along with healthcare, the All Nations Healing Hospital in Fort Qu’Appelle, Sask. is giving its patients a second freebie — new cloth masks, all handmade and donated.
Soon after the Saskatchewan government declared a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than a month ago on March 18, the hospital’s management team figured respirator masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) would be in high demand.
“We knew ... we were going to see some risks with respect to securing our stock and wanting to ensure that our patients were also feeling safe and being safe,” said Gail Boehme, the hospital's executive director.
The hospital put out the call for cloth mask donations on Friday, asking for “skilled members of the public” to donate masks they’d sewn.
Thus far, the public has delivered, dropping off approximately 600 masks.
“We felt we should appeal for cloth masks; that way we could give those to the public for the purpose of that physical distance, and they're an acceptable replacement mask.”
When a patient or a visitor leaves the Indigenous-focused hospital, they leave with a handmade mask to keep. Each mask comes with washing instructions so they can re-use it.
“People who are working at the facility … providing direct-patient care or working in patient-care areas, are required to wear a surgical or procedure mask continuously,” following directives from the province, Boehme said.
The donated masks allow the hospital to ensure “our stock is secure and meant to go to those individuals providing that direct-patient care.”
Giving masks to patients as they leave is part of the hospital’s protocols for reducing the spread of COVID-19, according to client services director Lorna Breitkreuz.
That means they need to “look at how to control the number of people coming through the organization,” she said.
The hospital has hired door monitors, asking them to work 12 hours per day at its two main entrances and its emergency department doors. Monitors remind people entering to wash their hands; ask them to self-declare if they have any problematic respiratory symptoms; and ask them to wear a mask upon entering, Breitkreuz said.
Patients are allowed just one visitor, only if they’re not in an acute-care bed.
“We have had people visit their loved ones through the window, and we have had a family member being able to sit with a patient that is requiring compassionate care,” she said.
Patients are also utilizing phone calls and video calling technology on their smartphones and tablets to contact their families.
The approximately 100 staff members at the hospital are also “self-screening for respiratory-related symptoms,” Breitkreuz said. “Checking their temperatures before they come into work … (they) come in and change their clothes for their shift, and they're changing out of them when they go home. Those working with direct-patient care have their clothes laundered within the hospital.”
Boehme said they’d be glad to take in more of the donated, handmade masks, especially if it means doubling their supply.
She and staff at the hospital are grateful for the initial donations.
“It's been an overwhelming response of generosity. People put their hands up and said ‘how many more do you need?’ That act in itself renewed my faith in humanity.”
