Longmont Journeys: The pandemic caused social workers to think outside the box to find patients care

Adena Kling, case management, social work and psychiatric triage manger at Longmont United Hospital, always knew she wanted to help people but didn’t always know where that road would lead her. 

Growing up her family valued service and helping the community. Her family’s influence led her to pursue a master’s degree in social work. 

What she didn’t expect was the love she would find exploring emergency psychiatric medicine. 

“It’s not for everybody. It is not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure,” Kling said. 

Her work includes accessing individuals who come to the emergency room who are experiencing suicidal or homicidal thoughts or are gravely disabled due to mental illness or even drug and alcohol-related. She and her team evaluate whether or not this individual needs further help and tries to get them into a facility, if needed.

Her work combines not only her love for psychiatric management but also case management, an unusual combination in the field, she said. 

Kling's team of nurses and social workers also plays a role in helping others who need more help after finishing their hosptial stay. This team evaluates the level of care needed for each patient and assists with obtaining the appropriate care, whether it be placement in a nursing home, hospice care, home health care among other options, Kling said. 

As with many other things in health care, COVID-19 has made Kling and her team’s jobs harder. 

“It has been a challenging year for sure,” Kling said. 

Among rapidly changing pandemic guidelines and COVID cases, Kling has seen an increase in substance abuse and physchiatric cases. She has notices that there has been a higher level of violence in the hosptial setting. She attributes the higher violence rate to people feeling upset after losing jobs and supports including therapy and support groups for addiction. 

“You had people whose safety net was either literally a financial safety net or other regular supports ripped out from under them. I think the stress and anxiety increased tenfold for people,” Kling said. “It was kind of a perfect storm and a boiling cauldron of the trifecta of things that really makes people struggle coping.” 

Despite the challenges, the patients face when walking in the door, going home has been an even larger problem. 

“For case management, it has been really tough because the nursing homes kept closing down because of COVID. So when we had a patient that needed placement it was sometimes really difficult,” Kling said.  

Fewer shelters were open to taking on new patients during the pandemic and methods of transportation to get patients there were difficult to obtain, Kling said.  

The lack of resources caused Kling and her team to think “outside the box.” In some cases, the LUH team had explore asking the patient’s family to travel in order to take care of them and other community resources. 

“We had multiple instances where we had to glue together a plan to keep a patient safe, to get to the next bridge,” Kling said.  

Although other organizations found their own share of hardship, some providers, who in a typical year might not take in a certain kind of patient, opened their doors to help place patients in medically relevant and safe places to get continued care, Kling said.

“Our community was definitely willing to work with us,” she said. 

When all the options were exhausted, Kling said the hospital kept patients until they were able to once again care for themselves or until an option finally opened up. 

“We did the best we could,” Kling said, adding that she worked within the larger Centura system to find the resources needed for patients, often checking multiple times a day. 

“I have always had gratitude for my team. The pandemic just heightened my gratitude for them, how they showed up everyday, brought their full heart into everything they did everyday, even with fear for themselves, what they were dealing with at home with their children or family members who might be ill,” Kling said.