Adirondack Medical Center Director of Education Kristin Finn stands inside the “COVID cabin” — the hospital’s structure for COVID-19 testing, which Finn has decorated to resemble an Adirondack cabin — in March 2022. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — People who got tested for COVID-19 at Adirondack Medical Center within the past two months might have noticed a cozy sight at the drive-thru testing clinic — a rocking chair, bouquets of flowers and a stuffed animal deer head mounted above a fake fireplace.

Nurses at the Adirondack Health-run hospital have been testing people for COVID-19 in a 7.5-foot by 7.5-foot structure dubbed the “COVID cabin,” which AMC’s director of education, Kristin Finn, has been decorating with rustic charm since the year began.

It’s decorated to look like an ice shanty, but it’s connected to a hospital instead of a frozen lake.

A sign outside the hut greets people as they drive in for COVID-19 tests — “Welcome to our cabin.”

“We don’t know how long (the pandemic) is going to last, but we might as well look good while we’re doing it,” Finn said.

Adirondack Medical Center Director of Education Kristin Finn stands inside the “COVID cabin” — the hospital’s structure for COVID-19 testing, which Finn has decorated to resemble an Adirondack cabin. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Cerbone)

Adirondack Health moved the testing clinic site in December from the main building to the annex building to get out of the ambulance drop-off path and into an insulated structure.

The walls were bare, supplies were stored on wobbly carts and tables, and nurses sat on folding chairs.

“It was really depressing,” Finn said, “A patient said, ‘It looks like you’re in a cardboard box.'”

Initially, she had just intended to paint the walls. When a patient remarked that the Christmas tree they set up for the holiday season was “festive,” her plans snowballed from there.

Adirondack Health president and CEO Aaron Kramer suggested making it “Adirondack-y,” and Finn took off with the idea.

The decorating started one Saturday afternoon in January. Finn covered the walls with a faux-wood plank wallpaper. The decorations went up little by little — paintings, heaters that look like wood stoves, and the centerpiece, a fuzzy stuffed animal deer head mounted on the wall.

Some of the trimmings are from Finn’s house, some she bought for the cabin and some she poached from the hospital’s decoration inventory.

Last week, she hung up lights where the walls meet the ceiling. The week before she replaced the folding chair with a classic wooden rocking chair from her home after a patient said they needed a rocking chair next to their fireplace.

The walls have windows with serene views. The scenes shown outside change with the seasons, but Finn hopes she won’t have to change them out for too many more seasons.

Finn had never done interior decorating before, but she used to make stage decorations for community theater. She said her goal there was to make the scenery convincing and distinguishable from the front row.

The deer head is mounted on a dollar store serving plate she wrapped to convincingly look like a wooden board. Below the deer is a grim warning and a bit of dark humor — a plaque reading “Not vaxxed.”

Employees at AMC have been testing for COVID-19 non-stop for nearly two years now. There’s no specific job position for COVID testing — employees take turns working extra hours on their days off. They work a minimum of six-hour shifts, even on holidays. This work is optional and nurses sign up to do it.

Finn is a salaried employee, so she doesn’t get paid any extra for the days she works there each week.

“I do it because somebody needs to be here,” she said. “It’s what nurses do.”

It can be a tough job, working with so many people, a percentage of whom are sure to come back with positive test results. But Finn said they take lots of precautions — two masks, eye shields, gowns, gloves, working outside and keeping short contact.

Papers and supplies are handed back-and-forth through a window in the back of the room to inside the building, where the man behind the curtain — Patient Access Representative Malachy Fehlner — processes all the paperwork. He sits in front of a giant print-out of a nature scene Finn hung up.

In the room, they’ve got glass tubes filled with lollipops and stickers for their youngest testers and dog treats — a suggestion from one of the nurses.

Finn said the cozy interior has been a comfort for the nurses who work there, making their job as enjoyable as possible.

The nurses also appreciate the decorating because it’s made the clinic look more “professional,” she said. The sturdy counters where they keep supplies look better than the wobbly carts.

It also brightens the days of people stopping in to see if they’ve contracted the virus which has killed more than 966,000 Americans since 2020.

“If you can make people smile as they’re having a stick up their nose, then yes, make people smile,” Finn said.

She said the room they work in is still small, but now they’ve got a comfortable chair to sit in and a miniature fireplace to keep warm by.