With exhausted workers quitting en masse, California hospitals faced staffing shortages.
The Omicron variant is so contagious that , although the vaccine has protected staff from getting seriously ill, it has forced many nurses to call in sick.
“We have had more people out due to Covid during this surge than before”, told the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Troy Pennington, an emergency room physician at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center.
More than two dozen people waited in the emergency room on a recent Tuesday for a nurse to call their name. They had ailments that had nothing to do with Covid.
The Omicron variant, although highly contagious, is also generally less serious than the Delta.
Those with flu-like symptoms were directed to a trailer outside near the ambulance bay. Those who were not seriously ill would be sent home.
In a gray cubicle behind the registration desk, Genesis Interiano, a registered nurse, wrapped a blood pressure cuff around the arm of her patient. It was her first day on the job.
Celine Aragón, who was training her, sat nearby guiding Interiano on the questions to ask the man.
With all the newly hired nursing graduates, Interiano had not yet been assigned a permanent person for her training, leaving Aragón to replace her.
“Before Covid started to increase again, on Tuesdays it was a little calmer,” said Aragón.
The hospital emergency room is usually staffed by 26 to 26 nurses, but there have been times when there is half or less, Pennington said. Some night shifts are only nine.
In this shift of 12 hours, assigned to Pennington to oversee the trauma unit and other critically ill patients. That morning, an ER doctor was sick with Covid.
There were Covid patients who suffered severe shortness of breath and respiratory failure. Of the more than 100 infected patients in the hospital, about 70% were not vaccinated.
“Sometimes my conversation with the ICU admitting doctor boils down to one word: vaccinated or not,” Pennington said. “That word sometimes conveys more information about the forecast than almost anything else.”
There were almost others 30 patients in the emergency department waiting for hospital beds. On Monday, that number was 44.
That puts pressure on resources and the ability to treat patients who come into the ER.
Meanwhile, it feels like a different world outside the hospital, where many people seem to be going about their business, something vaccinated people can usually do with considerably less risk from the virus.
“You walk outside and you can almost forget we have a pandemic,” Pennington said .
But the reality, he said, is that this is not the time to do anything that could land him in the hospital , because waiting alone can be a punishment.
“This is not a time to take risks,” he said. “Those things that you take for granted, being able to get an ambulance quickly, being able to get in and be treated quickly in an emergency department, often don’t happen.”
Above, in ICU 4 North , there were 15 Covid patients and a bed available after a patient died that morning.
The hospital recently set up a second ICU to house the overflowing Covid patients.
Usually only one or two trainees enter the ICU, but with so many vacant positions “we are hiring five, six at a time,” said Zorina Hernández, manager of the intensive care unit. He compared the scheduling during the surge to a frustrating game of “Tetris”.
“Our staff is working overtime, double time, overtime, overtime days just to try to serve customers. that they are sick,” Hernandez said. “It’s wearing them out”.
“We are just being pushed to our breaking point”, added the nurse to charge of the UCI, Beth Koelliker. “We cannot function and take care of our normal population with COVID invading and taking over an entire ICU.”
Those frustrations simmered that same day at the Board of Supervisors meeting of the county on January 11, where some Arrowhead nurses shared their experiences.
Francisco Amezcua , a registered nurse in the hospital’s emergency department, detailed the strain caused by staffing shortages, stating that “not only does this cause a delay in necessary treatment, but it also causes nursing staff to work with unsafe proportions of patients “.
“It’s a numbers game. There will be errors, treatments will be delayed, and preventable deaths will occur,” Amezcua said. “Please consider that this could be your loved one at any time”.
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