Northern California business voices of the pandemic: Dr. Amy Herold, Providence medical center, Napa

THE NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL

March 21, 2022

2 years later: COVID’s impact on the North Bay economy

Sonoma and Solano counties: Different COVID approaches but similar outcomes

Sonoma has been among the California counties with the most proactive public health measures in the past two years, while Solano County has resisted measures.

How has each industry been faring?

Beyond the human toll, the pandemic, public policy responses to it and consumer reactions have had impacts on employers that vary by industry. We talked to players in several sectors, and here’s what they told us.

Voices of local business

Here are the personal stories of how North Bay leaders have steered their organizations through the past two years. What has changed? What were their worst fears, and how did they face them?

The Business Journal talks with Dr. Amy Herold, chief medical officer of Providence Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa.

How have the past two years changed you, personally and professionally?

The past two years really make you take a step back and prioritize what is most important. I realize how important my family and friends and my own well-being outside of work are. I put together my first advanced directive for my own care, as none of us working on the front lines caring for COVID-19 patients knew if we would contract the virus before we had treatments or vaccines. We were afraid of taking it home to our families and self-isolated to protect their health.

Over the two years, I’ve learned to heavily rely on the health and science experts and evidence-based medicine to make decisions. Prior to having good evidence, the pandemic taught me the value of transparent communication with the team. No one knew what supplies or testing equipment would be allocated to us from day to day.

We would huddle every morning and discuss: “This is what we are doing today. It may be different tomorrow. We are going to get through this together. If any decisions we make are not working, please come back and tell us immediately, as we are all building this plane as we fly it.”

I truly think being honest with the entire team that we were doing our best day by day created a sense of ownership in every department to work together and pull us through.

Being vulnerable as a leader isn’t a weakness. It’s being open to involving the entire hospital team and trusting them. I am hopeful I can keep that honest vulnerability as a leader.

What was your worst fear, and did it materialize?

My worst fear literally kept me up at night many nights in a row in the form of nightmares.  Napa is a tight-knit community and many of us know each other from fundraising events and community benefit events.  I had recurring dreams that we only had one available ventilator and two people that I knew and loved came in and both needed the ventilator.

In my dream we had to choose between two friends/neighbors/prominent community members and decide who got the life-saving ventilator and who didn’t.  As the chief medical officer of the hospital, the ultimate decision after an ethics meeting would lie with me.  I’m incredibly grateful we never found ourselves in that situation.  In December 2020 and January 2021, we came close to utilizing all our ventilators, but our sister hospital in Humboldt County had extra (ventilators).

Our biomedical engineering director drove up to Humboldt County on New Year’s Eve to pick them up to ensure we had all the equipment we needed to handle the winter surge.  The teamwork between our Providence regional partners allowed us to care for all our patients that needed us.