CMC Nursing Chief Defends County Health Officer's Decisions
On the Monday morning Talk Back show on KGVO Radio, Associate Chief of Nursing Hollie Nagel spoke up for the difficult decisions that Missoula City County Health Officer Ellen Leahy has had to make in trying to keep Missoula safe as the state reopens for business.
"I definitely don't envy the difficult decisions she has to make," said Nagel. "I think she's doing what's in the best interest of the public at large and those are difficult decisions anytime, but especially when they affect us on a minute to minute basis like these decisions are doing."
Nagel spoke from a medical standpoint about the more restrictive policies the county has enacted, as compared to Governor Bullock's recommendations last Friday.
"I do think keep social restrictions in place and keeping gatherings limited is a good thing," she said. "As we start to incrementally open things up we want to make sure to do it in such a way that allows us to see what the impact will be, and it may take us a couple of weeks and that seems to be the incubation period for this virus to really know what those impacts are."
Nagel said Leahy has her full support.
"If we open it up completely and just say go back to normal, then we could have a much larger tragedy on our hands than if we do it incrementally and in a thoughtful manner," she said. "Again, I definitely don't envy the decisions she has to make, but I think she's making them with the best interests of everyone in mind."
Nagel appeared on the Monday morning Talk Back program along with Dr.'s Michael Stewart and Aaron Feist, as well as Communications Director Megan Chondra.