WNPC Chicago Staff Building
The Staff Building at Doc Weston's South Side is a two-story structure connected to the campus via enclosed, heated-and-cooled walkway, following the Baltimore model with adaptations for Chicago's climate and Englewood's particular demands on clinical staff.
The staff therapy/counseling room at the Chicago site is the most heavily utilized in the WNPC network. Working in Englewood takes a toll that working in Baltimore, Boston, or Orlando -- as challenging as those environments are -- does not match. The patient population carries more trauma. The community violence is more acute. The systemic abandonment is more visible. The staff absorb it -- the chronic pain patient whose pain started with a gunshot wound, the child whose seizures worsen every time there is a shooting on their block, the caregiver who is grieving a family member lost to violence while also managing their loved one's chronic illness. The secondary trauma accumulates, and the therapy room exists because Logan understood that staff who absorb Englewood's pain without support will burn out faster than staff at any other site.
The residential units provide safe, affordable housing near the clinic -- significant in a neighborhood where safety concerns affect housing choices and where staff who commute from safer neighborhoods face the disconnect of leaving their patients' environment at the end of each shift. Staff who live on campus are rooted in the community in a way that commuters cannot be, and their presence gives the campus continuity beyond business hours.
The enclosed walkway eliminates outdoor exposure between the staff building and the clinical campus in winter -- staff moving between buildings during a polar vortex event do not cross open air.