As Wilmer’s newest satellite location, Wilmer Eye Institute – Bethesda opened its doors in the spring of 2019. By January 2020, the clinic was seeing upward of 145 patients a day. Then the pandemic hit. We recently spoke with clinic manager Jessica Schmidt about what Bethesda is doing to meet the needs of patients and staff since reopening. As Schmidt says, at Bethesda change is just part of the routine.

How is Bethesda doing during these challenging times?
We’re doing well. Right now, we’re at about 90% capacity of what we were pre-COVID, so we’re seeing about 130 patients a day.

What are some of the modifications you made to address the changes wrought by COVID-19?
One thing we’re doing is using a single entrance to make sure that every patient who enters the clinic is screened. We’ve also placed social distancing markers 6 feet apart in the registration area, and we have acrylic barriers along the entire front desk area, with six separate stations where our patient service coordinators sit.

To maintain social distancing, the minute patients check in, we take them directly to an exam lane instead of having them wait in the waiting room. Our technicians and providers wear masks and face shields whenever they’re interacting with patients, and we’ve also put shields on our lasers, phoropters, slit lamps and indirect headlamps.

Within the optical shop, we have acrylic barriers to protect our opticians and patients when they’re picking out glasses, and we have UV boxes that help to sanitize the frames.

That sounds like a lot of changes!
It is, but we’re used to making changes. When Dr. Mona Kaleem came on board, she conducted a low-vision assessment of our clinic. It turned out that our results were better than the institute that put out the survey. That may be because when we were designing and building the space, we incorporated things such as contrasting colors to increase visibility for our low-vision patients. We’ve since added yellow tape to highlight our front entrance, and during the pandemic, we posted brightly colored signs and arrows to help direct patients to the exits because they don’t come back to the front after their appointment. The arrows have been helpful, so we will likely keep them once things return to normal.

What lifts your spirits during this time?
Staffing has been a bit of a challenge because of things like child care conflicts and team members getting sick, but I just hired four new employees. I’m hopeful that the additional support will spread the burden of things such as dealing with PPE, wiping down surfaces multiple times a day and thoroughly disinfecting every exam room between patients.

I’m so proud of my team’s resiliency. Whenever I hear one of my team members laugh — whether it’s in the break room, coming down the hallway, or even having a positive conversation with a patient or provider — it gives me a big lift, because staying positive can be hard right now.

I think having people say thank you and feeling appreciated is important, because we ask a lot of our team. I try to say thank you to everybody every day. Whenever a grateful patient says thank you or gives a compliment, I send it out to the team to make sure everybody knows that they impacted that patient’s experience while they were here. That’s what I’m focused on.