Reflection and Gratitude: An Open Letter to Our Community, and Sansum Clinic and Ridley-Tree Cancer Center Teams

by Marjorie Newman

January 20th marked three years since the first laboratory confirmed case of COVID-19 was detected in the United States, followed a few short months later with the World Health Organization and CDC’s declaration of a global pandemic. At the time, none of us could have imagined how much our lives would be upended, or for how long. We only knew that COVID-19, then known as the “novel” coronavirus, posed a serious health threat and was likely to be the greatest public health challenge we would face in our lifetime. It was also very clear, as other local healthcare practices closed down and temporarily shuttered their doors, that our patients and our community needed us more than ever.

Much has happened over the past three years. The World Health Organization COVID-19 dashboard reported 663,640,386 confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally, along with 6,713,093 deaths since the onset of the pandemic and the CDC reported a total of 1,099,866 deaths in the U.S. as of last week. In California, since the beginning of the pandemic, nearly 12 million cases have been reported with a total of 101,982 deaths, which translates to 1 in 387 residents having perished due to COVID-19. In addition to the many lives lost, many others have been forever impacted from this scourge, which has left both physical and emotional scars, not only for patients and families, but also for the healthcare workers who have diligently, empathetically, and selflessly cared for them.

Sansum Clinic rose to the challenge, finding new ways to work, new ways to collaborate with local healthcare partners like the Public Health Department and Cottage Hospital, and new ways to communicate with each other to ensure our community and our organizations had the most current scientific information about COVID-19 testing, treatment, and prevention. We quickly implemented new ways to provide healthcare both on an individual basis (via telehealth) and on a larger public health scale. We were among the first in the community to begin immunizing Santa Barbara’s healthcare workers and patients once COVID-19 vaccines became available, and we were the first to offer patients safe, car-based COVID-19 testing, opening a special trailer location just for this purpose. We ran the community’s only large COVID19 vaccine clinics just for children at our Pediatrics Department. In addition, we were the only ambulatory care facility in southern Santa Barbara County to provide Evusheld to protect immunocompromised patients against COVID-19 infection. And our Clinic ultimately became a COVID-19 “test to treat” site within our Urgent Care Department.

We were able to do all this only because of the grit and perseverance of our dedicated clinical and administrative staff members. Nurses, medical assistants, pharmacists, registration staff, physicians, advanced practice providers, IT employees, marketing staff, and facilities and administrative logistics teams worked countless hours to provide these services – both during and often after regular business hours. They cared for patients with COVID-19, but also countless others who needed safe, ongoing medical or surgical care for their acute or chronic conditions despite all of the challenges the pandemic threw our way, from staffing shortages due to illness, to supply chain issues. The good news is we have finally reached a turning point after a long window of offering these services on a wide

Reflection and Gratitude Page 394