This week we connected with Jack Davis, AM Courier Lead for UW Medical Center Reference Lab Services (RLS) Courier Group. Davis has been working on the front lines of the pandemic in a role most of us don’t even think about. He shares his experience transporting specimens from testing sites to the laboratory — an often overlooked, but critical step in tracking disease transmission.
Q: For those who are not familiar, could you share what a medical courier does?
A: UW Medical Center RLS couriers collect specimens from outlying locations and transport them to our centralized specimen processing labs. Our two largest processing centers are the main lab on the Montlake campus and the Clinical Virology Lab. The Clinical Virology Lab handles all our COVID-19 specimen processing. We currently have some 20+ routes and our COVID-19 specific pick-ups. Couriers start as early as 6:15 a.m. and finish as late as 12:30 a.m. We work every day of the year.
A typical courier day involves driving a preset route. Couriers go to the same stops in the same order at the same time every day. We cover territory from Seattle to Moses Lake and Ferndale to Olympia. But we don’t really have typical days. Cars break down, tires go flat, people call in sick, our COVID-19 specific clients call with schedule changes and supply requests we can never fully anticipate. My ideal day is one where we have enough surge capacity to shoulder all planned and unplanned events without anything getting dropped or missed. And (knock on wood) so far we have always been able to make it work.
Q: Do you remember when you first learned about COVID-19? What were you thinking and feeling at that time?
A: Yes – it was March 2, a Monday. Talk of COVID-19 was in the air the previous week. I remember that on Friday, February 28, my supervisor said he thought CV-19 was going to be a big deal. I told him I disagreed – I figured it was just being overblown. Then, on Monday morning, Greg Pepper (manager of the Clinical Virology Lab at EVIR) told me that we were gearing up to be able to process 1,000 specimens a day. By Wednesday, that number was up to 5,000 a day. Later, it was adjusted to a goal of 15,000+. With hindsight, I see this as the time we stepped out of the known into a long surreal period of intense work beyond what any of us had done before.
Q: How did your work change as the weeks progressed?
A: Right away, change happened fast. Supply systems began faltering. Dry ice became impossible to keep in stock. Our quantity of specimen transporting totes proved to be too low. We needed more of everything. More drivers. More cars. More routes. More stops. More totes to transport specimens. More ice packs. More dry ice. We couldn’t get hand sanitizer for couriers or Sani-Wipes to clean cars. Masks simply did not exist. Frequent handwashing was the advice offered.
The processing systems for incoming specimens were never designed to handle the volume of samples COVID-19 unleashed on them, and there was no time to redesign the process. SPS put out a call for volunteers and threw bodies at the problem. People came from other labs. Folks came out of retirement and volunteered. People worked 7 days a week; did double shifts. Doing whatever it took was how jobs got done. Nothing was sacred. If something worked better than the current way, better was what we did. And through it all, couriers performed flawlessly. When asked to stay late, they did. When asked to make extra stops, they did. Every courier stepped up to the best of their ability to get the job done.
Eight months into these COVID times so much has changed, yet so little is different. We continued to see an unrelenting pace of COVID, COVID, COVID. We continue to transport COVID-19 specimens in large volumes on a steady basis and service COVID-19 specific clients in addition to our regular routes.
Q: Why did you choose to work as a medical courier?
A: I started as a medical courier because it offered decent benefits and was a good part-time job to help my transition from having been a boat builder/Composites Construction Project Manager to becoming a writer. But something happened. At some point, the service aspect of courier work hooked me. An experience from my old route gives a good example. On the route I drove, there was a patient I saw every day. She was a wonderful women; full of positive energy. One day she told me that just seeing the bright Hawaiian shirts I wore always made her day a little lighter. Sadly, she passed away, but her daughter made a special trip to tell me how much I had meant to her mother just by my simple daily actions and attitude. Over the years, these experiences began to accumulate and being of service became an important thing to me.
Q: During this difficult and often stressful time, what keeps you going?
A: Someone at UW Medical Center said this COVID-19 work is the most difficult, frustrating and rewarding work they have ever done. I agree.
What keeps me going is faith. Years ago, I spent two months at a boat building school in Maine created by Lance Lee. Lance told a story about a rock on Hurricane Island. It was about 6 feet tall and had a sheer face on one side, but you could easily walk up the back of it to get to the top. He used it for a team/trust/relationship building exercise. Your task was simple. Stand at the top of the rock with your back to your teammates, close your eyes, spread your arms and fall backward trusting that your teammates would catch you. Lance said the experiences on that rock were transformational for many people.
For me, this COVID experience is like that rock. There are huge numbers of people working together, doing better than any of us have a right to expect with the information and circumstances they have to work within. It is that faith-based teamwork experience I find transformational. It is not a religious faith, but a faith in teamwork, trust-based relationships and a passion to do the best work possible no matter the circumstances. COVID-19 eradication will not be fast, nor pretty, but with faith and trust we will undoubtedly triumph in the end. For me, the way forward is to Fall Like On Hurricane (FLOH) and doing that has made all the difference.
From the beginning, the University of Washington and UW Medicine have supported our state’s efforts to mitigate the effects of COVID-19. “Huskies fighting COVID-19” is a feature series highlighting individuals whose work is making an impact from Public Health and Computer Science & Engineering to the Virology Lab and the emergency room.