Covid and Hospitals: How are things now?

[CrunchRN]

Just curious. Here in DFW I see hospitalizations are rising to 14%. How are things in the hospitals? Are things relatively normal? No more furloughs?

Please share. I am not in acute care, but I am of course very interested in the effects on acute care staff.

[toomuchbaloney]

23 minutes ago, gere7404 said:

Yesterday, though, some group called like, “maskless women of Oregon society” or something like that held a protest outside the hospital and several hundred people, if not a thousand showed up. Figure this with the Labor Day weekend will blow up our cases further. We’re gonna be hurting for staff, too, because 40% of the hospital is unvaxxed and Kate brown put out a mandate to get poked or get a new job and a lot of people are about to jump ship. 

I wonder if those unvaccinated hospital employees are planning on collecting unemployment or if they will be looking for work outside of healthcare.  It's weird that remaining unvaccinated during a pandemic is such a strongly held belief among health care workers.  

[DesiDani]

My medsurg unit will have a 1/4 of the rooms for covid. They just put in those big air vents in the windows. It is only fair because other units were solely covid, now it is spread out.

[Wuzzie]

74 Covid + /31 on vents

41 suspected

No staff, no beds -not necessarily related to Covid

All those people who wouldn't get the vaccine because it wasn't "FDA approved" are now beating feet to get the monoclonal antibodies that still aren't "FDA approved" the second they pop positive.?

 

[toomuchbaloney]

24 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:

74 Covid + /31 on vents

41 suspected

No staff, no beds -not necessarily related to Covid

All those people who wouldn't get the vaccine because it wasn't "FDA approved" are now beating feet to get the monoclonal antibodies that still aren't "FDA approved" the second they pop positive.?

 

At least they are intellectually lazy enough that they will never feel any cognitive dissonance over that....

[MunoRN, RN]

Our ICU is now fully Covid, non-Covid ICU patients are scattered elsewhere in the hospital, including a cath lab and EP lab.  

Out of 30 Covid patients in the ICU only two remain un-intubated, all are proned 18 hours a day.  The oldest is in his 50's, most are in their 40's. 

Our peds unit, which is not a pediatric ICU now has a zoom connection with the Doc Box at the regional children's hospital that is always on for consultation, basically you just sit down in front of it and yell "hello" until you get somebody's attention.  

It seemed busy when it was still like ICU nursing but just busier, now it seems in no way related to hospital nursing, just some sort of disaster zone cluster... which makes it seems not so unnerving in terms of nursing practice because there's little relation to 'normal' nursing or medical practice.

[Charlcie, BSN, RN]

16 hours ago, gere7404 said:

 

Yesterday, though, some group called like, “maskless women of Oregon society” or something like that held a protest outside the hospital and several hundred people, if not a thousand showed up. Figure this with the Labor Day weekend will blow up our cases further. We’re gonna be hurting for staff, too, because 40% of the hospital is unvaxxed and Kate brown put out a mandate to get poked or get a new job and a lot of people are about to jump ship. 

this makes me so sad. I hope the patients could not see them. I cannot imagine how upsetting it would be to see these protestors as a sick, frightened patient. It's so infuriating. 

[CrunchRN, ADN, RN]

Thank you for the updates. The protesters ae ridiculous. I sure hope this surge starts waning soon.

 

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

1,700 patients per day streaming through Texas state hospitals ED's

COVID patients overwhelm Texas hospitals, amid 'hair on fire' crisis

Quote

...Nationwide, more than 100,000 patients are currently hospitalized with COVID-19. About 14,000 of those patients are in Texas -- the highest number of patients receiving care on record. And statewide, nearly 94% of intensive care unit beds are currently in use by COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients....

"There are many patients that are not doing well," said Dr. Shawn Nishi, an associate professor of critical care medicine at UTMB. "It's very chaotic, because these patients are very unpredictable. At one moment they look great and the next moment, they're dying. ... It is a 'hair on fire' time in the ICUs."

About two-thirds of the hospital's ICU patients are COVID-19 positive, she added, with nearly all of them on ventilators....

"To have two-thirds of your ICU occupied by one disease is virtually unheard of," said Nishi.

There are 678 patients waiting for a bed across southeast Texas, with more than 4,000 patients hospitalized across the region, compared to just 138 patients in ICUs with COVID-19 at the beginning of July, according to the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council....

 

[turtlesRcool]

My heart goes out to all of you in COVID disaster zones.  In contrast, my area has good vaccination rates, and our COVID hospitalizations have continued to be quite low.  We've had many days this Summer without a single COVID patient in my whole hospital, but Delta has brought some back in.

I think the last update I saw was 5 confirmed and 8 rule-outs.  That's less than half a unit.  When we surged in Spring of 2020, we had 3 full med-surg floors for COVID +; a full floor for rule-outs, and critical care was mixed, but included two ancillary ICUs for for COVID only. We also had refrigerated trucks because we ran out of morgue space. This Summer, things feel almost normal. Almost.

We are short staffed, which is exhausting, but not soul-crushing the way the COVID surge was. I'm wondering if ratios will improve in the fall. On one hand, the first new grad batch should be taking assignments and most people will be back from vacation. On the other hand, people have until October to get vaccinated or file for an exemption.  At that point, they will have to resign or be fired, and I honestly don't know how many will be out.  Given the vaccination requirements are statewide, some may have a hard time finding equivalent employment elsewhere, which may push some of the hold-outs into vaccination.

We recently moved back to a no visitation policy, except in special circumstances like end of life. Prior to that, people could have 2 visitors per day, then 1 visitor per day, but so many of them could not, or would not, follow simple rules - stay in the room, keep your mask on at all times, no eating/drinking (because that requires you to unmask).  

I wonder how much of our high vaccination rate is just from being a blue state, and how much is from the shared memory of so many deaths in the early days of the disease. I'm both sad and angry that many of you are going through surges now. It was hard back then when COVID was new and deaths were inevitable, but it's so much worse now because it didn't have to be this way.

[chevyv, BSN, RN]

We were at 10 with 2 of those intubated. That was about 4 days ago.

[SmilingBluEyes]

On 8/27/2021 at 8:05 AM, NRSKarenRN said:

1,700 patients per day streaming through Texas state hospitals ED's

COVID patients overwhelm Texas hospitals, amid 'hair on fire' crisis

 

That's over 100k beds nationally,  and 1700 ER bays in Texas NOT available for others who need them just as much. This infuriates me. This disease is a disaster!

[toomuchbaloney]

3 minutes ago, SmilingBluEyes said:

That's over 100k beds nationally,  and 1700 ER bays in Texas NOT available for others who need them just as much. This infuriates me. This disease is a disaster!

And the response of the American public has been disastrous.