Q&A with WellSky teammate Max Divine: A veteran nurse caring for COVID-19 patients
At WellSky, we’re honored to recognize of the many ways our teammates are uplifting their communities. As COVID-19 first took hold in the U.S., we highlighted three of our teammates who are supporting their affected neighbors.
Now the pandemic continues to endanger individuals and communities across the country, and healthcare workers are in high demand as states and hospitals continue to see surges of COVID-19 patients. With increased staffing needs, many retired medical professionals are returning to work to face COVID-19. One of them is WellSky teammate, U.S. Army veteran, and registered nurse Max Divine.
In late spring 2020, the Army called Max Divine, RN, BSN, MBA out of retirement to lend his clinical expertise to support an influx of COVID-19 patients at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. Max served in the military for nearly 22 years before retiring, earning his nursing credentials along the way. Before the pandemic, Max worked as Senior Director for Human and Social Services Client Experience, and he will return to this role in late 2020.
In this insightful Q&A with Max, we learned about his experience caring for COVID-19 patients directly every day. Read more:
How long have you been working at WellSky?
I’ve been at WellSky for just over a year, so I’m no longer a newbie.
What did your day-to-day work at WellSky look like, pre-COVID-19?
As part of the WellSky team, I proactively work with clients every day to ensure they understand how to use WellSky solutions to best serve the people they care for. My day-to-day work revolves around finding new ways that we can support our clients and their missions. I’m constantly thinking about how we can help clients discover new innovations and strategies. I work alongside WellSky’s solution management team, the client relationship executive (CRE) team, and the software engineers to find ways that we can continue to improve our clients’ experience.
What was the callback process like? How were you called out of retirement?
I got a call from the Army’s Human Resources Command, which is the big HR group that handles of all things related to personnel. They were looking for specific skillsets to help with COVID — specifically, nurses, doctors, radiological technicians. They were looking for anybody who was currently in the military, in a “reserve” status, or in a “retired” status that had the medical skillset to help out. They asked me if I could still deliver clinical care, and I said, “Well it’s been a day since I’ve taken care of patients directly, but I’m willing to do it if you’re willing to let me do it.”
What does your day-to-day work look like now, as you’re facing COVID-19 and delivering patient care?
I’m working with COVID patients every day. I deliver direct patient care. So, I’m talking to patients, finding out what’s going on, determining what they came in for specifically, what their primary symptoms are, and if they’ve had any potential exposure to COVID.
I’m wearing a mask every day, wearing eye protection every day, gloves all the time, full personal protective equipment (PPE). That also includes a disposable gown with every patient encounter. Sometimes it’s tedious to put on, and it can take a little bit longer to go between patients, but it’s necessary to keep infections down and to keep me from getting sick — because I’m not helping anybody if I get sick.
It’s somewhat similar to what you would expect if you have any familiarity with the emergency room. I work in an emergency room in Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. It’s a level 1 trauma center that sees about 250 patients a day on average. So, it’s a pretty busy emergency room. I have 12-hour shifts, and they’re pretty busy. It’s nonstop from the time I get on shift to the time I get off shift.
We also run a lot of people through COVID testing. Quite a few of those test come back positive. People come in for a lot of different symptoms or injuries, but we always have to consider COVID now.
I previously worked as an emergency department (ED) director as well. So, as an additional duty, and because of my knowledge of ED throughput and processes, I work with the hospital’s leadership team to improve and streamline these processes.
Who are the patients you’re seeing? Military patients and their families? Civilians?
The military medical system is set up to see military patients and their dependents. Or people that have been retired from the military, like me. Those are generally the people we see. But because Brooke Army Medical Center is a level 1 trauma center, we also take in civilians that the ambulances services bring in to us. There are only two level 1 trauma centers in San Antonio, so we do have civilians come in (I call them “civilian occurrences”) that are not affiliated with the military, coming in from the community.
How are patients handling this? Can you share some perspectives from patients?
Patients are scared a lot of the time. If they’re not symptomatic, they worry about becoming symptomatic. I also think COVID is keeping people from going to an emergency room. In some cases, people that come in are sicker because their primary care practitioners or the clinics they use for preventative care are closed or harder to get to now. So, people often wait longer to get care, and they get sicker before they come in.
We see some folks in general that are worried when they come into the ER — as most people would be no matter what you come in for. You’re anxious because you’re in an ER. And you’re in an ER because something happened to you and you need emergency care. But adding the COVID on top, and you have a lot more people coming in for care. Some of the patients we see could be people that WellSky’s solutions support, including people experiencing homelessness and people with developmental disabilities.
It’s important to know that each patient is a whole person when they come in, and not just the sum of their symptoms, conditions, or injuries. Each patient is a whole person with their own anxieties, issues, and knowledge gaps — because a lot of people don’t understand healthcare as well as the people who work in healthcare.
People ask a lot of questions, and maybe they don’t know what questions to ask. That’s also one of the things that I enjoy. I enjoy getting to know each person, establishing a rapport and trust. I think that goes along with whenever you meet somebody, especially in the ER during a pandemic.
Now it’s even more important to make sure that you are taking care of each person in a holistic way. That’s also what we do at WellSky too. We’re supporting people in a way that consider their health conditions and also the social determinants of health that may be affecting their overall wellness. That’s one of the great things about our approach at WellSky, the way we do things at WellSky.
Based on your experiences facing COVID now, what’s your perspective on what WellSky clients face every day?
This current experience has helped me put our clients even more at the forefront of my mind. That those agencies and teams and nurses need us to help support them and understand them even more than we did pre-COVID.
I can only assume that our clients are also overwhelmed with more people to care for. And those people are dealing with more and different COVID-related issues. Our clients also have their own workforce concerns, just like every other business does right now. They’re thinking ‘Do I have enough people to make this happen? And can I continue to do that work that I’m doing?’
Our clients look to WellSky for new innovative ways to help in their struggles — to help them deliver better care and service to the folks that they work with. I think they look to us to understand their perspective even more now. They’re not just a person that doesn’t understand a solution. They are actually working with someone that needs their help, and they’re using a solution to try and facilitate that, to help them do it. So, it’s really about the job that they’re doing, who they’re doing it for, and why they need solutions to be innovative and work for them.
What keeps you going?
Taking a step back and understanding why I’m doing what I’m doing is helping motivate me and realize the goal: helping another person. That’s true reason why I’m doing what I’m doing.
Returning to clinical work and taking care of patients, I sometimes see the exact same thing in 10 different patients in a day, so it can get repetitive. But realizing that each patient is a new and different person with their different viewpoints, background, anxieties is hugely important. Ultimately, I’m not just here to help someone with their asthma. Rather, I’m here to help this unique, individual the patient deal with their asthma, feel better about it, obviously if they’re really sick, to help save their life. And providing clinical care is also educating patients, supporting them, trying to understand them.
That’s the part that I think would help anyone to enjoy what they’re doing. It’s the real reason why you’re there.
After you complete your service in November, what are you most looking forward to personally?
Going places with my family. I’m looking forward to spending time with them outside the home doing activities, like camping. I enjoy coaching martial arts. My kids take martial arts too, so we all do that together.
We also like off-road racing, but that’s obviously been shut down for the most part. It’s a family thing that we like to do. Think Polaris RZRs, Can-Am Mavericks, and dirt bikes. Consequently, I also break things and enjoy fixing things so we can do it again the next time. I’m really gonna enjoy getting back to that hobby when its safe.
Generally, I get really curious. That mechanical engineer that’s still in me somewhere likes to work on things and figure out how things work. I think that also helps in some ways with the COVID nursing work I’m doing now because I can understand the healthcare piece. I enjoy trying to figure out how processes and systems work. I enjoy trying to improve of those. Believe it or not, that’s actually what I like doing in my free time — when I’m not camping and coaching. That tinkering is therapeutic.
What do you want people to know about your experience as a frontline nurse during COVID-19?
It’s humbling. It’s humbling to see that you have the opportunity to help people that need it — for whatever reason they need it. That’s a very rewarding experience.