This ‘Chief Therapy Officer’ is a welcome presence

Denise Minor (left), Mount Carmel Health System’s vice president of patient care services and chief nursing officer, brings her Labradoodle, Gracie, to the hospital to comfort exhausted staff during the pandemic. On the right is unit coordinator Kathy Wills. Photos: TNS

Somewhere inside the intensive care unit at Mount Carmel Grove City, in Grove City, Ohio, the United States, on one recent morning, Morgan Sheehan and Holly Riegel stood beside a bed and helped the patient lying in front of them FaceTime with family one last time before the person would be intubated and lose the ability to communicate, at least for now.

It was a moment that is repeated over and over and over in these days of Covid, one that never gets any easier.