TLU does its part to support local health professionals

Seguin, TX, USA / Seguin Today

Cindy Aguirre

(Seguin) – Working even harder and taking on longer shifts are not necessarily the top concerns for many doctors, nurses, and other employees at Guadalupe Regional Medical Center. What is ranking high these days is the threat of taking the COVID-19 virus back home with them.

That apparently is the concern for many health care professionals as they work around the clock to treat what officials say is a growing number of hospitalized patients at GRMC. Helping to ease many of those worries for those working behind hospital walls is Texas Lutheran University.

That’s because the university has opened its campus for those who need it.

TLU President Dr. Debbie Cottrell says whether its not wanting to spread the virus to their family, a tiring commute or to house those who have been called in to fight the virus locally, the university is proud to be partnering up with its friends at GRMC.

“It’s the nurses who work at GRMC. The space that we’ve made available is really for anyone who is working there right now including some nurses that have been brought in from the outside to help GRMC at this really challenging time so what we’ve provided was a space that anyone that GRMC routes our way in terms of their employees,” Cottrell.

As for the idea, Dr. Cottrell says opening its residence hall doors to nurses was the right thing to do.

“We try to stay in contact with our good friends at GRMC all the time and certainly during this pandemic, we have been in conversation with them around all kinds of things — how things are going there, what kind of questions we have as we anticipate reopening in the fall and several weeks ago, sort of generally the notion, issue, question came up that if they got in a situation where their front line workers might feel safer or might for whatever reason need space to stay rather than going home, would TLU be able to help with at? In the abstract, we said certainly, we would be glad to see what we could do. That, as I said, was several weeks ago. The specific came just in the last week or 10 days when they circled back to us to say ‘okay, we are at a point now where we really do need some help with housing and what might you all have available and how could that work so that was a specific request that came in a larger context of a conversation that we’d be having,” said Cottrell.

Cottrell says the temporary living space provides all the basic accommodations that one should need and are being turned over and utilized with all safety measures in place.

“They are part of our residential hall inventory but they are the apartment part of them so they’re apartments rather than just dorm rooms and what we’ve done is we’ve set aside 16 apartments for TLU to use as needed so whatever they determine they need, we have that much capacity to help them. Right now, they are not using all of that capacity but as you say, we know we are living through a time when things are changing day to day. Unfortunately, still not getting better yet and so that space will be there over the coming weeks for them to use as they need to,” said Cottrell.

Of course, like most places, TLU has remained closed to on campus instruction and to all other summer programming. With plenty of space available, Cottrell says she hopes that in the end, this will help ease some of the stresses for those who remain on the frontlines right here in Seguin.

“We are trying to stay open to any request that we get in terms of helping the community. We are trying to be in good communication with our local officials not only at the hospital but our city and county officials as well to make sure that anything we are either doing in terms of our campus or looking to do in the fall will be consistent with all the guidelines but also good for the community and so, I think what we recognize is that our campus is quieter right now than usual so when we get a request like this, we are able to help because we are still in a very  limited mode here and I think a lot of our effort has been in making sure that anything we are doing or contemplating doing, will be good for the community as a whole,” said Cottrell.

TLU says it’s committed to helping stop the spread of the virus so that we all can return to life and learning. Upon returning the residential spaces, TLU ensures that each unit will be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized for all future use.

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