MORGANTOWN — Reinforcements arrived Tuesday at J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital – a front line in the fight against COVID-19.
Twenty-five members of the Air and Army National Guards, all volunteers, were welcomed with a breakfast before training to take on non-clinical jobs in the hospital, just as if they’d been hired to do so.
Those roles include escorting patients, dietary and environmental services, said Michael Grace, president of West Virginia University Hospitals and chief administrative officer for WVU Health Systems.
“They’re in very important roles, every role in this hospital is a member of our care team,” Grace said. “And so we’re looking forward to having them with us.”
One of the volunteers, Cpl. Chandler Abshuer, said he wanted to be on the task force and of service to the community.
Abshuer is a political science major at WVU and member of the 157th Military Police Company out of Martinsburg. He switched to all online classes to better work with this schedule.
He said he’s excited about the opportunity.
“It’s good to be out here and help,” Abshuer said. “And my dad’s in the guard too. So he’s doing something like this similar in Maryland.”
A lot of the soldiers are super motivated, said Major Joshua Poling, acting state public affairs officer for the COVID response. Last week, he was at Charleston Area Medical Center, where guardsmen had already begun helping.
“I’m seeing the excitement that these soldiers are actually going to be able to help a very stressed health care system,” Poling said. “These doctors and nurses and health care providers have been working harder than most of our soldiers and airmen. And I don’t mean that in a bad light, just the stress that they’ve had to go through.”
Grace said he wanted to express gratitude to the National Guard and everyone who works at Ruby.
“We can’t say thank you enough as leaders to the common people who work here,” Grace said.
The soldiers, who will be uniformed while helping, will find the hospital has lots of former service members and guardsmen, said Dan Bazzoli, director of nursing operations and a veteran himself.
“You will be approached by lots of folks to ask where you’re from, what you do, your MOS, where you’ve been stationed,” Bazzoli said. “So I think you’ll really appreciate the culture here that is super military friendly.”
Gov. Justice activated the guard earlier this month to relieve stress on the health system which is overrun with cases of the omicron variant of COVID-19 amid staff shortages.
“We have staff members out every day, you know, that are either COVID positive or isolating. And so they will be able to help with those shortages,” Grace said. “But they will also just be able to help in units that could just use an extra set of hands. The more people we have escorting patients, the less time a patient has to wait to be escorted.”
Grace said there is no ETA on when the soldiers will leave – they’re taking it week by week – but he is hopeful the omicron surge dissipates as quickly as it spiked.
