Interviewee: Mark Mattison, Bennington, VT
Interviewed by Jaden Cross, Amherst, MA
Date: October 19, 2020, Via Zoom
Topic: Working in a rural hospital during COVID 19.
Jaden Cross: So, then we can start now. Please state, then spell out, your full name.
Mark Mattison: Mark Mattison. M-A-R-K M-A-T-T-I-S-O-N.
Jaden Cross: Please state your age and where you live.
Mark Mattison: I’m fifty years old. I live in Bennington, Vermont.
Jaden Cross: Please state your job, where you work and for how long.
Mark Mattison: I’m a lead CT Technologist at the Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC) and I’ve been doing CT scans now for twenty-one years.
Jaden Cross: Here’s a repeat. Could you please give me permission to include your interview, both audio and visual formats, in the Hampshire College COVID19 Oral History Archive?
Mark Mattison: Yes, I give my permission.
Jaden Cross: What happened when the hospital… What happened when the hospital. (Oh my god), I wrote this completely wrong. Ok, what happened to the hospital when COVID19 hit?
Mark Mattison: Well, what we did was we basically just stopped doing any elective procedures: No elective surgeries, no routine screening, imaging exams, that sort a thing and only did patients that were symptomatic or emergencies. So, things got very, very slow around here. Because we live in an area that’s not very densely populated, so we never really had a surge of Covid patients. So, people got furloughed and things got really slow for a few months. Until we were allowed to go back to doing our normal daily business.
Jaden Cross: Why did the hospital furlough so many employees?
Mark Mattison: We just didn’t have the business anymore. We weren’t doing all those procedures we normally did. They were being put off plus, there were way fewer people coming into the emergency room for a while. I think because of fear you know of the Covid and going into a hospital where there are a lot of sick people. So we, we got very slow so we had to let some people go for a while. But as far as I know, everybody’s back now. I know everyone in imaging is back to work now.
Jaden Cross: How did the whole thing make you feel at the time?
Mark Mattison: Well I mean, I can only speak for myself personally. I was never really that worried about getting Covid. I wasn’t really afraid of that sort of thing. We had a lot of protocols in place, as far as mask wearing and face shields. And anyone that was even remotely suspected to be infected with Covid was put on airborne isolation and we a lot of even stricter personal protection stuff that we have to do for people that are on those, precautions. So I was never afraid of getting Covid or anything.
Jaden Cross: How did the hospital eventually adapt to the pandemic?
Mark Mattison: Well, it took a little while. At first things were … everyday, there was a new rule about, you know, you can wear this and you can’t wear that and if you know. But, I think we’ve finally kind of figured now and we’re still, I mean we’re still in pandemic mode here. Everybody’s still wearing all the personal protective equipment. We still are social distancing, our patients in the waiting rooms, we have two waiting rooms. So we can you know have people further apart. We’re wearing scrubs that are provided by the hospital, That we don’t, so we don’t you know bring our own clothes home to wash and all that. Lots of little things we’ve done to adapt to it. I don’t know how long it will go on for, but it remains to be seen I guess.
Jaden Cross: Did the number of patients you see per day change?
Mark Mattison: Like I say they did, it actually went down a lot. We were, I’ve never seen it as slow in the entire time that I’ve even you know since I’ve been doing x-ray for twenty-five years or so. I’ve been here doing that and it has never been as slow as it was for those two or three months. When we were basically kind of shut down, just, you know, to make us so we would be able to handle a surge of Covid patients if they came in. But that never really happened. We did Covid patients for sure, we did positive patients and suspected positive. But we never had a huge surge of patients like they had in other areas that are more densely populated. But, we’re back to at least as many patients as we were doing before. But it’s mostly the routine stuff, not a lot … of Covid patients unless we get another wave of it.
Jaden Cross: Given your job is at a hospital, were you ever reluctant to go to work?
Mark Mattison: I wasn’t personally, I know some people were. Some people were a little more afraid of it than others. But I think it’s you know there’s a certain demographic of people that are really seriously at risk, you know from the virus from you know getting seriously sick from it and I’m not really in that demographic so I didn’t worry too much about it. Plus all of the different precautions we take here do make it very unlikely that for an employee to contract you know Covid from a patient. We’ve very cautious.
Jaden Cross: Have you ever been put into quarantine? If so, what was it like?
Mark Mattison: I haven’t. I’ve never tested positive or anything. So I’ve never had to quarantine. And I don’t think too many of our employees tested positive here. There’s been a few but not very many.
Jaden Cross: What was the ER like during the early stage of the pandemic? These are a lot of redundant questions.
Mark Mattison: That’s alright. It was very slow during the early stages of it. Because I really think people were afraid to come in. Because you always feel like you know if you’re going to catch something, it’s probably going to be in the hospital. And that is true. We’re definitely a place where you can pick up infections. And I was actually quite surprised because people come into the ER all the time no matter what. And I thought for sure that they would keep coming in but, for a few months, the people did stop coming into the ER. It was quite dead.
Jaden Cross: Was the amount of time that you usually worked altered in any way due to the pandemic?
Mark Mattison: It wasn’t for me but it was for a lot of people. I mean like I said, a lot of people were furloughed altogether and other people did have their hours kind of cut back. That did happen for sure. … Because of our area, because we never had the surge of Covid patients. I mean if you were to interview somebody … that was at a hospital in a big urban area, they’d probably tell you that … they ended up working a lot extra hours and that they had to bring in extra help. You know because they had to you know. Especially places like New York City where they had the huge surge of patients. But it was kind of the opposite for us here and it has to do with the fact that not a lot of people live here. So, it doesn’t spread like it does in big cities.
Jaden Cross: Well that was the last question, I don’t know how to end this.
Mark Mattison: Well those are all good questions.