Cambridge College Springfield

Karen Miguel [MM '09] has been working on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic since before the deadly disease even hit the shores of this country. Miguel and her team at the Massachusetts General Hospital Patient Care Services were carefully monitoring the rapid spread of the coronavirus as it made its way across Asia and into Europe earlier this spring and knew they had to prepare. "We knew the surge was coming," said Miguel, a registered nurse in the Nursing and Patient Care Services Office of Quality and Safety. And they knew they had to act fast. "We watched the trends and the numbers," she said, "and we knew we had to work hard to flatten the curve." Knowing Boston was about two weeks behind New York, they kept close tabs on that city as they transformed Mass General from a 1,000-bed hospital with seven intensive-care units to one with 11 ICUs and a recovery area. One of the interesting things they noticed...