When a call goes out to help the most critically ill COVID-19 patients, a small team from Legacy Emanuel Medical Center goes into action
Updated Feb 02, 2021;
It begins when an intensive care unit doctor making rounds in a hospital somewhere in the Pacific Northwest stops at the bedside of a COVID-19 patient.
The chart, in clinical language, details case history and foreshadows the eventual outcome. Added oxygen has not reversed the illness’s course. Nor have the anti-viral medications, the respirator or the ventilator. Even the best medical care has its limits.
There is, however, one more chance.
The doctor steps away and uses the phone, reaching an operator at One Call on the third-floor of what those who work at Northeast Portland’s Legacy Emanuel Medical Center have named “the old hospital.”