Vaccine clinicals for staff at Ascension Via Christi are still underway.
KMAN was recently invited to the hospital to observe the COVID vaccine process. So far, the hospital has administered over 1,000 doses including both the Manhattan and Wamego locations. Staff, such as Pharmacy Director Kevin Oehme, are excited to finally be at this point.
‘It’s fun to be a part of this after almost 12 months and seeing a lot of sick patients, a lot of sleepless nights with trying to keep our staff safe,” says Oehme. “Knowing that we are able to get staff through here and protected is a big win for us.”
The process of receiving the vaccine is simple; check in, wait, get the shot, and then conduct an exit interview. Oehme says the part of the process that actually takes the longest is the paperwork.
After a patient has gotten the shot, they wait for about 15 to 30 minutes and move on to an exit survey to make sure they aren’t having an severe side effects.
Supervisor in Surgical Services Andrew Kvasnica, who has helped administer the vaccine, says they have only had a few side effects reported, specifically with the second dose. The most common side effect reported is arm soreness for a few days.
When someone receives a vaccine, they are given information to track the lot number of the vaccine they received. This will help with future data collecting to see which lot numbers gave side effects.
President and CEO Bob Copple says they tried to make sure they did not have more than 20% of staff from the same department and shift receive the vaccine on the same day. This is due to potential side effects.
“It’s just like any other vaccine, there’s gonna be some of that so we have to spread out the potential impact to our workforce,” says Copple.
When scheduling staff for the vaccine, they would look a few week in advance. This allows them the allotted time between doses, which for the Pfizer vaccine, is three weeks. For the Moderna vaccine it’s a four week window between doses. Staff also had to make sure they did not receive another kind of vaccine within two weeks of receiving the COVID vaccine.
Hospital staff has been mostly receiving the Pfizer vaccine, which has to be cooled in an ultra low temperature freezer. They have been able to get about five to six doses from each vial.
“There’s a lot of work that goes into behind the scenes for these clinics, I can’t say enough about all of the work our staff has put in,” says Oehme. “To this point everything has extremely gone smoothly, far better than I could have anticipated.”
