SEATTLE — National Nurses Week is underway and it's a special time to thank nurses for their tireless work, especially this past year during the coronavirus pandemic.
KING 5 wanted to share the story of the nurse in charge of the largest civilian led vaccination site in the country.
"For our nurses, they are the orchestrators they are at the center of most of the patient's experiences," said Renee Rassilyer-Bomers, who runs the clinical side of the Lumen Field mass vaccination site in Seattle.
"We are responsible for the vaccinations, the folks who are giving the shot, the folks who are prepping," said Rassilyer-Bomers.
Lumen Field has administered as many as 8,000 vaccinations in a single day.
"We have people from all sorts of backgrounds, disciplines who are giving up their time and energy to support these efforts," continued Rassilyer-Bomers.
This includes a large number of skilled nurses working to protect lives while also dealing with changes of the pandemic.
"If there's one bright spot of COVID-19, it's taught us innovation," Rassilyer-Bomers said. "We are just going with the philosophy that what we were doing this week might not be what we're doing next week."
Rassilyer-Bomers has almost 20 years of experience in healthcare under her belt. The design, structure and workflow of Lumen Field were all ideas taken from her work at a small vaccine clinic in Seattle, which ended its operation just days before Lumen Field opened.
"With the support of the city and other partners in the community, pulling this together in less than three to four weeks was pretty remarkable," she said.
To Rassilyer-Bomers, the work at Lumen Field has been the most rewarding work of her career, and she knows other nurses are feeling it too.
"With this work, there's hope, which is super exciting to see... Our goal is 70% of the community vaccinated, then we will see a shift in the number of patients we see in the hospitals and the number of folks who are dying from this disease."
