So as we progressed along our journey with dealing with COVID, we were able to begin to use the Therapy room again. Unfortunately there were still alot of restrictions.
Masking and Social Distancing
So luckily we are fortunate to have a rather large therapy gym. This allowed us to begin the transition to performing treatments individually in the therapy room with enough room to maintain over 6 feet between the group of 1 therapist and 1 resident.
This approach also required residents to wear a surgical mask through the whole treatment session. It also required the therapists to be wearing an N95 mask as well as eye protection.
All items used for treatment sessions were needing to be either disposable or able to be cleaned with disinfectant spray.
The Therapy mat table was transformed into a cleaning station to allow for items to air dry from disinfectant spray.
Continued Testing and just waiting for a break
At this time everyone was required to test 2 x per week with the residents needing testing once a week.
Unfortunately at this time the testing was still PCR testing which would take 3 days to come back each time. So once again test and get results back just in time to test again.
This also made for a challenge with testing the residents However at the time there were still no visitors in the building. Everyone did window visits or outside “drive up” visits from 6 feet away. This made it less probable that they would be a source of infection.
Surprise! Back to isolation
One of the best surprises was when your resident comes up positive for COVID. It is even more of a gut punch when you are literally sitting right next to them when they were told. It just makes you feel numb and disheartened when you were just face to face with them working on standing up from the wheelchair.
So off we go to bringing them back to their room, put on full new PPE and complete the treatment session in their room. Oh by the way the clock of isolation starts over at day 0 of 14. Back to working in the room again like at the beginning.
All the while just hoping the N95 was enough to protect you. And at least you were already testing to try and protect your family when you get home.
