Chatom has a population of just over a thousand. It’s about an hour north of Mobile. Chatom has one stoplight and two Mexican restaurants. Trucks pass through with pine logs and many folks pick up their mail at the small post office in the center of town. Everyone knows each other and residents say their hospital and doctors are a godsend.
Dr. Megan Carpenter is working with her latest patient. In a town with no specialists, she covers everything from pediatrics and sports injuries to internal medicine. COVID brought in ventilators and more respiratory therapy.
“That’s not anything that our hospital or any critical access hospital was equipped to do before COVID,” said Carpenter. “It’s been a big learning curve for our staff, but we have highly trained medical professionals with our nurses and our lab techs.”
Some patients need more care than the small hospital can provide. They are usually transferred to a hospital in Mobile or another larger community. That was before COVID hit. Now, the pandemic means hospitals across the South are filled with COVID patients and can’t accept transfers.
“He was a very special clinic patient of mine, and his family is very precious to my heart. Around day four of illness, he had been on the ventilator for that long at our facility. We tried to get him transferred, but we couldn't find a bed for him anywhere in multiple states. Some states wouldn't even accept our calls," Carpenter said.
They finally transferred him to another hospital and he recovered. Carpenter said other patients had different outcomes.
“In a small town, you know the patient, his wife, his children, you know the grandparents and what would fall apart if the patient were to pass,” Carpenter said. “There's so much more to consider because not only are you that patient's doctor, but you're the rest of the family’s doctor too. So you're praying with that wife, you're consoling the child, you're seeing them in follow up. All while they're processing all these other things”
The community also supported the hospital. Local industries gave supplies and made masks and gowns. They also made nightly prayer walks around the hospital during the 6:30 shift change.
“They would pray at the hospital and they literally walked around this entire building. Those that could, some physically weren't able, so they're walking around this entire building praying,” said Teresa Grimes.
She’s the CEO of Washington County Hospital and Nursing Home. She said the prayer walks from local churches sustained the staff and gave them strength and encouragement.
“They knew a lot of those rooms or families told them to stop at such and such room. They stopped and put their hands on those windows to pray,” Grimes said. “And oftentimes a resident was sitting there waiting on them to do that.”
Like other hospitals, a nursing shortage became a crisis during COVID. In smaller communities, the issue is especially tough and there are few nurses to fill in the gaps. Managers took nursing shifts making sure every patient was cared for.
“And I don’t sleep good, and I worry about the staff, and how do you manage it and what do you prepare for?” asked director of Nursing Nicki McKee.
She’s working overtime to keep nursing staff together and filling in the uncovered shifts.
“I’ll crash when I’m so tired, and wore out, until I can’t take it anymore. And my biggest thing is the staff and this burnout, and how do you protect them, and how do you keep them together and not lose any more staff, and the turnover and that that type stuff,” McKee said.
Every COVID death was hard, but one of the hardest was one of their own nurses. She did a devotion and played the song “Till The Storm Passes By” on April 30. Grimes said that nurse was hospitalized with COVID on May 4 and never came out.
“She died on the 26th and we played that song over and over,” Grimes said. “You want to talk about some of the hardest times. It’s losing your coworker. It's dealing with family and being there for that family, I still talk to her husband on an ongoing regular basis. Nikki and them coded a co-worker that we've all worked with and we love dearly. Having to code that person and that person not make it.”
But the support of the community and even little things like homemade brownies kept them going. The staff calls their weight gain the COVID 15.
“For me, it was a COVID 40,” joked Grimes. “The churches wrapped candy bars with motivational sayings and scriptures. Sometimes the amount of love and time and effort that went in from the outside was the only thing that allowed us to come back the next day.
COVID has shown the gaps in Alabama’s rural healthcare system. The Alabama Department of Public Health still lists Washington County as having a substantial risk of transmission. Still, healthcare workers and communities are still trying to fill those gaps the best that they can.
