‘I Never Thought I’d Be Helping During a Pandemic.’

Apr 9, 2020

They call her a “screener." It's a role that could be viewed as one of the most important in the entire hospital. 

Emily West, a 21-year-old junior Communications major from Boston, wanted a summer job that could help her with her future career—she wants to be a speech pathologist. So last summer, she applied at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, one of the largest in the area, ready to do whatever was asked of her. She really just wanted to get familiar with the hospital environment.

“I never knew what I would be doing in this job,” she says.

Because this was the semester that COVID-19 happened, and the entire world had changed. Emily’s spring break was extended, and like she does on most breaks from school, she went to work at the hospital. That’s when she was asked to switch from her normal job, which involved communicating to families and escorting them to patients’ rooms, to become a screener, where she would literally be set up just beside the front door. She had to ask each person who came in whether they were a visitor—or a patient.

Then she asked the most important three questions anyone could hear these days:

1. Had they had shortness of breath, fever, cough, congestion, or muscle pains in the past 24 hours?
2. Had they traveled in the past 14 days to any of the Level 3 warning countries or been exposed to anyone who had?
3. Had they been exposed to anyone with, or suspected of having, COVID-19?

If the prospective patients said yes to any of the questions, they were given a mask and brought to the side of the room. If the visitors said yes to any of those questions, they were asked to leave. For 25 hours over the course of three days, this was Emily’s job.

Some people were not pleased.

“But some people thanked me for what I was doing,” she says. “Some had older relatives, or newborns, and they realized we were trying to protect them. It was crazy to think we were really the first ones people saw when they came into the hospital. I never thought I’d be helping during a pandemic.”

At the time, 22 employees had gotten the disease at the hospital.

Now Emily is back at home during the days, taking her Xavier classes online. Still, during that time, Emily kept telling herself and co-workers: All for one. One for all.

“My co-workers were doing all they could to help, so I decided that I could do that, too,” she says.

 By Ryan Clark, Office of Marketing and Communications

Read more stories about Xavier on the Front Lines of COVID-19.