Health & Fitness
MN National Guard Exits Nursing Homes As COVID-19 Cases Drop
National Guardsmen were first deployed in November to serve as "rapid response teams" and help fill staffing shortages.
MINNESOTA — The Minnesota National Guard has pulled the last of its members from nursing homes across the state Tuesday after a recent, significant drop in COVID-19 cases.
National Guardsmen were first deployed in November to serve as “rapid response teams” to help fill staffing shortages at long-term-care facilities during a surge in cases throughout the fall and winter.
About 500 Guardsmen trained as certified nursing assistants and temporary nursing aides to serve at 49 nursing homes in Minnesota, according to Lt. Col. Brian Douty, who led the Minnesota National Guard’s COVID-19 response.
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The National Guard leveraged its partnerships with the Minnesota Department of Health and 16 colleges across the state to get its members trained and certified as nursing assistants in less than a week in November, Douty said.
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The certification course usually spans a semester for students seeking to become nursing assistants, he said, noting the National Guard’s training “was 100 percent the same” as civilians receive.
Many members of the Minnesota National Guard work in the healthcare industry, but the service did not take any of them away from the frontlines to fulfill its mission in nursing homes, Douty said.
“We did not activate any of those professionals,” Douty said. “We did not want to rob Peter to pay Paul.”
The National Guard’s mission at nursing homes changed some Guardsmen’s lives and saved at least one life, Douty said, recalling how a soldier recognized a resident had just gone into cardiac arrest and used their recent CPR training until paramedics arrived.
That resident is still alive today, Douty told Patch on Thursday.
Most of the Guardsmen who worked in nursing homes were “very humbled” by the experience and the opportunity to serve in their home state, Douty said.
“One of our pillars is community partnerships,” Douty said. “We live in these communities, we work in these communities, and we’re proud to serve in these communities at the same time.”
The Minnesota National Guard has also supported operations at COVID-19 testing sites throughout the state since mid-October.
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