Jun 5, 2020
Heroes on the front line: Maggie Beiser
A new Coverage series features the voices of doctors, nurses and other hospital workers battling the coronavirus in Massachusetts
Around the world, health care providers are on the front line of the battle against the coronavirus.
They are struggling to treat a disease with no known treatment, one to which no human has natural immunity.
At Coverage, we are giving Massachusetts doctors, nurses, NPs, PAs and other hospital workers a chance to speak to you, our readers, in their own words. We asked that they share their simplest, most urgent lessons and messages as they face this new virus with no vaccine and no cure, a virus vulnerable only to our common human bravery, ingenuity and compassion.
One of the things that has been so impressive about Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program’s leaders is how they’ve taken down the walls of our normal day-to-day work structure and said, 'How can we be creative? How can we respond to needs we don’t even know we have yet?' We erected isolation and quarantine tents, created clinical programs for COVID+ patients from scratch, are co-leading the effort to test guests at the city’s main shelters, and have switched to telehealth for some of our regular clinical services. Nobody ever says, ‘we can’t do this.’ And even though we have 50 balls in the air, our leadership has kept all of us informed about everything that’s happening.
- Maggie Beiser, NP
Director of hepatitis C services, now co-supervising Boston Health Care for the Homeless' isolation tent program
More in the "Heroes on the front line" series:
Dr. Narayana Lebaka
Chief of hospital medicine
Baystate Noble Hospital
Chelsea Lawrence
PA - Emergency Department
Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital–Needham
Dr. Regan Marsh
Emergency physician
Brigham’s and Women's emergency department
Dr. Raghuveer Rakasi
Hospital Medicine
Baystate Medical Center
Kelly Young
Director of Environmental Services and Patient Transportation
Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital - Milton
Dr. Vijay Sankaran
Attending physician
Boston Children’s Hospital