Covid and Hospitals: How are things now?

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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.

Specializes in New Critical care NP, Critical care, Med-surg, LTC.
3 hours ago, Wuzzie said:

Current situation in my hospital.

84 confirmed cases (27 suspected)

40 in the ICU

36 on ventilators

Yikes, how many beds and ICU beds do you have? I'm in a small hospital, we only have 12 ICU beds. I've been off for a week, my coworker said yesterday 10 were COVID at 6 intubated. 

29 minutes ago, JBMmom said:

Yikes, how many beds and ICU beds do you have?

1300 in patient beds. 200 ICU beds. 

FTR we only have 30 beds total open right now and they are all spoken for. 6 ICU beds but are expecting transfers in.

Specializes in New Critical care NP, Critical care, Med-surg, LTC.
7 minutes ago, Wuzzie said:

FTR we only have 30 beds total open right now and they are all spoken for. 6 ICU beds but are expecting transfers in.

Wow, good luck to you and all of your coworkers. Hoping that there's an end to all of this not too far away. 

Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.

Thanks very much for the updates!

Here in North Texas things are much better than they have been in a long time. Our positivity rate is as low as it has ever been.

Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

We are seeing our highest numbers in over a year, and we probably haven’t had our full Thanksgiving surge. Discussions are happening of no longer allowing the use of ECMO for COVID patients because our mortality rate in those patients is 100%, the only surgeries allowed to happen are those that are life/limb/sight or guaranteed going home after, and the community vaccination rate finally tipped over into the very low 60s%. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better. 

Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.

On a somewhat related note.................the SNF/Rehab that my dad is at just shut down to all visitors again since they had 1 Covid positive (not sure if employee or patient). They finally had open visitation for the 1st time since he has been there, but that lasted maybe 2 weeks?

Luckily, that hasn't happened here yet as I also have my MIL in SBF/Rehab here currently.

Specializes in CWON.

What is everyone seeing in your hospitalized COVID patients with regard to vaccination status? For hospitalization in general?  What about specifically sever disease (ICU)?

Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

Over 120 patients total, about 80% unvaccinated. 16 in ICU, 15 of those unvaccinated. 10 on vents, all unvaccinated. 

120+ patients is about 1/3 of our total beds. And that doesn’t include those here long enough that they’re no longer considered COVID but non-infectious. 

105-confirmed (including ED patients)/45-suspected (1300 total beds)

40 on vents with 39 of those in the ICU (200 total beds)

I work at a huge hospital system. While Covid cases are nearing record numbers in the state the percentage of patients hospitalized in my facility is relatively small. So clearly Covid is not the cause of the lack of beds and I suspect it has more to do with staffing.

Specializes in Cardiac ICU.

     Chicago IL northern suburbs: total census 264 (265 total capacity), 7 rooms with double occupancy, 67 Covid+, 294 deaths associated w/Covid - the only reason why our COVID numbers are down is because the deaths are increasing. we are experiencing the fourth COVID-19 surge and they are among the unvaccinated.

     It has been so awful in that patients and their families are not honest with us – they distort the truth about being vaccinated and living in the same household as the patient. Because of their dishonesty, we have prohibited (once again) no visitors for COVID patients – we had allowed one visitor to view their loved one from outside the glass doors of the patient’s room. It was not until we found out that family members were in the Emergency Room and diagnosed with COVID that we figured it out! People have been buying fake vaccination cards online, not telling the truth, and are deliberately spreading the contagion. We are losing many nurses to agency nursing where they can earn up to 4800K in one week! Instead of rewarding the nursing staff that is staying, they will implement a 6% hourly raise in January, re-evaluate in 30 days, and pay us for January in March. Truly, this is nothing compared to the bonuses they are offering for new hires and agency staff. 

Specializes in Clinical Research, Outpt Women's Health.

They never seem to reward loyalty. Pitiful.

Here in DFW I can only give the stats from the paper. As of today - 5% of hospital bed occupancy is Covid related, and positivity rate has been increasing to 8 percent as of yesterday. The increased positivity rate has not yet led to any increased hospitalization yet and seems to be driven by Omicron.

Specializes in New Critical care NP, Critical care, Med-surg, LTC.

We are just under 200 beds in our hospital, 12 ICU beds. Last January at the height of things we had got to 60/200 COVID positive. When I left this morning I think we were at 33. However, now we have patients that have been in the hospital greater than 20 days since their initial positive test so they don't show up on the COVID census and are off precautions. We have three in the ICU right now outside the 20 day window, all on ventilators. 

As I said in another post, we have had one COVID positive person make it off the vent since early October. He was vaccinated. Every unvaccinated person that we have intubated since August has died. And I think we've had five or six vaccinated people also end up dying on ventilators. 

We recently had a sad situation where a gentleman in his 40s was admitted. His wife didn't want to cancel Thanksgiving so they didn't tell anyone he had symptoms. His brother died one week earlier, and his daughter died about six hours before he did. Fortunately, he never knew that. I can't even imagine how that woman must feel now. So sad.

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