Paul van der Wijk starts his last month as a director at the Wilhelmina Hospital Assen (WZA), after which he closes the door behind him. And he does so with mixed feelings, says the hospital administrator in the Radio Drenthe program Cassata. “It does make you a bit melancholy when you consider that you will close the door, because we have done really beautiful things.”
For three years, Paul van der Wijk was chairman of the board of the WZA in Assen. Much of that time was dominated by the pandemic. ”A surrealistic period,” is what the chairman of the board calls this period. “I got up in the morning and I heard the birds chirping and the sun was shining, and then I got to the hospital and everyone was in an uproar. People in suits, the ICU was moved to a different place, a triage tent. All incredibly intense. And also for the nurses and medical specialists.”
Van der Wijk can still remember the first time he heard about the virus. “On January 4, one of the pulmonologists came to see us and he said: I have seen that there is a mysterious virus in China, that’s what he called it at the time. And this was not known anywhere else, so we couldn’t get there like that. a lot with it.”
Until the first corona cases were identified in the Netherlands. “On the day the first patient was received in the south, we set up our first crisis team here in Assen. We immediately ordered extra mouth caps, insulation coats, medication, but of course we had no idea what was going to happen. We set up a very large triage tent in front of the door for hours. It was 67 meters long. Everyone was immediately in action mode. And that is of course what a hospital can do very well.”
The pandemic also taught him a lesson for the hospital. “I think it is very important in Assen that acute care continues, and that you take good care of your staff,” concludes Van der Wijk.
Paul van der Wijk will say goodbye to the WZA on September 27. A successor is still being sought. Interviews are scheduled for this week.
Watch the entire conversation with Paul van der Wijk in Cassata below. In it he tells how he experienced his time in the hospital during the pandemic. But he also discusses the investments that have been made recently, and that are yet to be made.