Harborview Medical Center
Alyssa and I got the opportunity to do a whirlwind tour and meet the wonderful folks at Harborview last week. We got our steps in during the walking tour and visited DOM faculty, staff and trainees at the main hospital, Pat Steele, and the Ninth & Jefferson buildings.
Harborview Hospital (originally King County Hospital) opened its doors to patients in 1931 and in 1967 King County contracted the UW to provide management and operations.
As the only designated Level I adult and pediatric trauma and verified burn center in the state of Washington, Harborview serves as the regional trauma and burn referral center for Alaska, Montana and Idaho and the disaster preparedness and disaster control hospital for Seattle and King County.
Dedicated to providing specialized care for a broad spectrum of patients from throughout the Pacific Northwest, including the most vulnerable residents of King County, HMC is also home to several nationally recognized outreach programs led by DOM faculty and staff. These include the nation’s first homeless palliative care program, one of only a few worldwide, as well as robust mobile health outreach services.
The DOM has >350 faculty based at Harborview. Our 70+ hospitalists care for nearly 50% of all admitted medicine patients and cover five medicine ward teams, as well as consult, triage, polytrauma, and nocturnal medicine services. We also provide specialty consult services in cardiology, pulmonary, nephrology, geriatrics, hematology-oncology, rheumatology, endocrinology, allergy-infectious diseases, gastroenterology and addiction medicine. We have 2 MICU teams and have dramatically expanded the CCU and added a second cardiology-hospitalist team.
In the outpatient setting, all major medicine specialties are represented, with numerous interdisciplinary collaborations across sections. Faculty provide care in more than 20 clinics, including several regional satellite locations.
HMC-based DOM faculty also conduct extensive clinical, translational, and basic science research, and our research program is thriving and growing, including the opening of a new HMC clinical research center.
In less than 2 hours we managed to visit the hospitalist group, geriatrics crew, pulmonary/critical care folks, KRI/NPH faculty and staff, and the cardiology HMC leadership. I then stayed to attend the in-person AID faculty meeting and really appreciated the welcoming and engaged audience.
Although we got to see a couple of clinical spaces like the nephrology clinic (wow!) and the CCU, Alyssa and I quickly realized that we will need to come back soon to visit other clinical and research units and will also bring more swag next time!
We were definitely able to appreciate the breadth and depth of research that happens at Harborview and the deep impact that our clinicians and educators have on the patient and learner community at this key UW Medicine site!
P.S. It was my birthday this past week and I was reflecting on prior eras of life where the first birthday after moving to a new city could often be a bit sad and/or lonely. On Thursday the amazing DOM staff and executive team all showed up and surprised me with multiple batches of homemade cookies. It was such a nice and thoughtful gesture, and this crew has really helped me feel connected in my first few months in Seattle. So I wanted to say thank you for all the small and big things that you do for me everyday - it really has made all the difference. ❤️
P.P.S. I was glad to have a bunch of friends from California visit this weekend since there was no way we could finish those cookies on our own. We did some local hikes around Snoqualmie and saw some beautiful waterfalls!