Two SVMHS employees suffer possible minor injuries after man accidentally slams into Covid triage tent.

Outside the emergency room department at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, between 30,000 and 40,000 patients have been screened in a tent in the past ten months by a triage nurse who determines what should happen to them next and what level of treatment, if any, those patients need. About 16,000 patients have been tested for Covid-19 there, with swabs sent to the county Health Department for a fast turnaround on results.

Tonight, just about 8:30pm, a car driven by an elderly man who had brought his ill wife to the hospital was backing up when the driver hit the gas instead of the brakes, hitting the triage nurse inside with enough force to break the car's rear window. A clerk working inside had debris fly her way. 

Both employees are being assessed at the hospital, where the driver and his wife were also assessed and then released. The extent of the nurse's injuries was not immediately available but they were not considered life threatening.

Jeremy Hadland, a registered nurse and the hospital's emergency services director, was just finishing his shift and getting ready to leave when the call came in from the emergency room charge nurse.

"I rushed straight out there and found a scene I was really not expecting to see," he says. "The poor gentleman and his wife were still in the car and seemed to be dazed and very upset about what happened."

Initially, they thought a large amount of gasoline had leaked from the car's tank; instead, though, the smell was coming from gallons of hand sanitizer that had spilled on the ground. 

The injured nurse, he says, was hit by the car directly.

"We are emergency nurses and emergency physicians and we deal with anything that happens," Hadland says. "Yes we are OK but it has definitely shaken up a crew that has been shaken up enough in ten months."

Last week, Hadland and other hospital staffers met to discuss the flow of patients through that tent, and through the parking lot, when people arrive seeking emergency treatment. For the time being, that screening area will remain closed as the hospital works on better safety precautions when cars are pulling in.

It was not immediately clear if the driver will face any charges in connection with the accident.