We have recently been fully immersed in the next wave in my ICU. Since August we've been hovering at 25-50% COVID patients in our small unit. When I left yesterday morning we had 10/12 beds with intubated COVID patients. Two coded and died yesterday (one was 38 years old) and then another not yet intubated, was admitted into one room and a NON-COVID! was admitted to the other. So we're 9/12, 8 intubated and we think one might survive, one probably died while I was home today. I'll find out when I get there for my shift tonight.
I was talking with my husband about whether if this had happened say 10-15 years ago, would we still have this seemingly political divide between vaccinated/not vaccinated. He was pointing out to me that the mortality rate is something like 0.016% and trying to rationalize something and I feel badly but I just sort of snapped at him. I told him I don't care what the mortality rate is. My pandemic is made up of those 0.016% and their deaths have been awful and frustrating and now that they largely seem preventable they're just worse. We put 10 people on ventilators in the past week knowing full well that almost all of them will die. I admit that four of the patients that have died since August were vaccinated. However, they all had significant comorbidities. The rest of them weren't vaccinated and many of them were angry at us right up until they went on the vent. And even if it is only 0.016%, it's going to end up being more than a million people in the US. A MILLION PEOPLE that were someone's mother, father, wife, husband, child, etc.
I believe in science, so I guess it's hypocritical of me to say that I don't care about math. But I don't. Because a number doesn't capture people. And doesn't capture what it feels like to go into work knowing you can't do what you trained for. We can't save these people. They're dying ugly deaths and we can't do anything.
Specializes in New Critical care NP, Critical care, Med-surg, LTC.
On 12/14/2021 at 1:08 PM, Susie2310 said:
It seems to me that this entire discussion is actually about nurses' desire for enhanced security/police measures and nurses' desire for patients/family members to face criminal charges if they exhibit aggressive/violent behaviors
That was not even close to my intended discussion post initially. I was initially wondering out loud to my husband whether the current political climate had influenced the course of the pandemic. Then he quoted me statistics about the mortality rate, pointing out that it is actually very low. And then I was hit with the clarity that statistics DO NOT tell the whole heartbreaking story about this pandemic because those people that died ARE my pandemic experience.
Later in the discussion I did mention that there has been an associated increase in patients that appear to distrust us as caregivers, are resistant to our attempts to help them, and have even accused us of fabricating their illness for some perceived benefit to the hospital. There have been more family members expressing similar views, and then I pointed out one family where there was a threat of violence. Not the main point of my discussion at all.
I love my job. The day that I posted the initial post I left with 10/12 patients COVID positive and on ventilators. Since that post three of them have died. We have one, maybe two, that we think may pull through with a trach and peg and months to years of therapy ahead. I'm not near a breaking point as you had perceived, I am, however, frustrated that some of what we're experiencing appears to have been avoidable through available vaccination. That was my whole point. There are others here that share similar experiences, so I was just looking for feedback.
You are right. Statistics taken out of context, or avoiding the broader view, are worse than useless.
"Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent's point.
And yes- it is incredibly frustrating. When this all started, I was ready. I did not say "I never signed up for this." I drove our camper van to work with supplies and extra scrubs in the event we were overwhelmed, or I felt unsafe going home. We weren't overwhelmed. And as of now, we still have enough vents, high flow, bipap, etc.. (This may be changing). But this influx of 40-60 year old vaccinated population bogging down our entire system is making it hard for me. And I am not in an ICU watching people die on a regular basis.
That was not even close to my intended discussion post initially. I was initially wondering out loud to my husband whether the current political climate had influenced the course of the pandemic. Then he quoted me statistics about the mortality rate, pointing out that it is actually very low. And then I was hit with the clarity that statistics DO NOT tell the whole heartbreaking story about this pandemic because those people that died ARE my pandemic experience.
Later in the discussion I did mention that there has been an associated increase in patients that appear to distrust us as caregivers, are resistant to our attempts to help them, and have even accused us of fabricating their illness for some perceived benefit to the hospital. There have been more family members expressing similar views, and then I pointed out one family where there was a threat of violence. Not the main point of my discussion at all.
I love my job. The day that I posted the initial post I left with 10/12 patients COVID positive and on ventilators. Since that post three of them have died. We have one, maybe two, that we think may pull through with a trach and peg and months to years of therapy ahead. I'm not near a breaking point as you had perceived, I am, however, frustrated that some of what we're experiencing appears to have been avoidable through available vaccination. That was my whole point. There are others here that share similar experiences, so I was just looking for feedback.
Thank you for explaining. I realized that you could have thought my comment was aimed at you. It really wasn't. One minute you and I were conversing about the concerns you mentioned in your second paragraph, and then at least one other poster jumped in to set me straight about how I am thinking wrongly in terms of violence that is perpetrated by patients/family members - when violence perpetrated by patients/family members wasn't even the main point that you and I were discussing. One person even told me to go away and that I shouldn't comment on this thread, which I found very inappropriate on a public forum. This is a public forum for all nurses, and I was engaging with you sincerely, and was certainly not suggesting that aggression/violence from patients/family members should be considered acceptable.
I'm glad that you are doing OK. I do agree with you that vaccination would have avoided the situation you have been experiencing.
Working nurses, especially those who have been actively caring for covid patients, are very well aware of the trauma on everyone, including ourselves, related to the fact that people suffered and died while loved ones were helpless and kept away. Hopefully you are also capable of imagining WHY, the main reasons why, people who were being told we might have to wear bandanas while also not knowing if we would soon all be dropping dead took some small bit of relief from having our own exposure to SARS-CoV-2 DIRECTLY REDUCED by visitor restrictions and yes--relieved at having some portion of our focus narrowed to the significantly new and chaotic medical situation at hand. You seem to have the capacity to afford the general public all kinds of best-case-scenario credibility. It's a shame that your published opinions don't very often include much compassion or understanding for those trying to provide care.
On a public forum you are going to read opinions you don't agree with. If you want to read just opinions like your own, or just people who agree with you, you are free to start your own private blog somewhere else. I have as much right as you do to participate in any discussion on this forum, and if you don't like what I say or who you think I am, I'm sorry, but that's too bad. I suggest that you read the OP's comment to me; she didn't intend for this thread to focus on violence any more than I was suggesting that violence towards nurses or maltreatment of nurses by patients/family members is acceptable; you and other people on this thread took my comments out of context.
No, you're pretending that people who are more pissed off than usual because they have chosen to believe that WE are the boogeyman who is out to get them are just frustrated due to the normal reasons that all the rest of us are frustrated. That's simply not true. They're acting like this because they think science and healthcare professionals are on the wrong side of everything to do with covid.
Can you understand that? I will make it simple:
Healthcare worker: Stressed due to people dying despite everyone's back-breaking efforts and the advantage of all the technology we have available, long hours, understaffing.
Random Joe Blow who threatens to shoot people: Thinks ^^ these are the enemy.
I will tell you how. They can cry, they can even raise their voice or speak in slightly more frustrated or stressed tones, they can spend more time seeking support than usual. They can look tired. They can complain more. Etc., etc., etc.
What they can't do, is things like threaten to shoot people. SHOOT PEOPLE.
Your continued theme of making excuses for the inexcusable is noted.
The idea that people can have a pass for (various forms of) harm to others because of their own health stressor is ridiculous and always was. Nursing should be ashamed of having entertained this for so long.
Then maybe it's a good idea if you stop commenting. As a self-proclaimed outsider who doesn't know the OP's circumstances, you haven't come up with a single helpful thing. You've made excuses for some of the most ridiculous human behavior that nurses have had to tolerate and now have capped off this episode of Susie's Airing-of-Grievances by advising a competent and compassionate adult professional of their choice to leave if they don't like abuse from patients and their family members.
Edit: It turns out I have one more comment:
With your perpetual dissatisfaction with nurses, have you ever stopped to think what the landscape is going to look like when a significant portion of compassionate and knowledgeable people do leave? What do you think your chances of having your loved one receive appropriate care will be then? It's already happened and still happening. Does that seem like a good solution to you?
It seems you are not tolerant of views that don't coincide with your own. I'm sorry, but this is a public forum, and you can expect to meet with people whose views you don't like.
Susie first of all, could you please quote people’s posts and write your replies separately? It would be helpful as it makes it a lot easier for other posters to quote you and reply to you.
I realize that the post I just quoted wasn’t for me but in response to hhern’s post, but I don’t think anyone here was discussing nurses’ desire for enhanced security and police measures. I think that you are the one steering the conversation onto that particular path.
I read the posts you’ve made in this thread and this is what I see. OP who is someone who has worked many shifts for well over a year, caring for Covid patients requiring ICU care. You showed up and felt the need to explain to OP how hard the pandemic has been for patients and patients’ loved ones. What made you think that OP even needed to be told about that?
The pandemic has been hard for e.v.e.r.y.o.n.e. Probably especially hard for ICU nurses.
Susie, I don’t know if you are aware or if this is just me, but I often get the feeling that you are attempting to educate us as if we’re a bunch of not overly astute five-year-olds. Most of us have either been patients, have loved ones who have been patients and whom we’ve worried about, or both. Most of us have cared for hundreds or likely thousands of patients and as many desperately worried loved ones. We k.n.o.w. what kind of stress people in these situations face. We know it’s scary.
I wish you could show even a tenth of the compassion and understanding for your fellow nurses as you do for patients and family members.
Now to the part of your post that I quoted. Yes, you can get arrested even if you are ill or in crisis. Being in crisis does not mean you are handed carte blanche to commit violent offenses. Family members threatening medical staff with violence or actually assaulting medical staff (or anyone else), is simply not okay.
I know that you said that you’re not excusing violent behavior, but it really does sound like you are. You are offering a number of explanations for the violent behavior. While those explanations can sometimes make a difference in a court of law when mitigating circumstances and specific aspects of an incident can sometimes have an effect on the verdict and/or punishment, they don’t affect whether something is a crime or not. What actually constitutes the criminal act/crime itself, is normally more simple and clear-cut.
Former career.. the numberoftimes I’ve said… Oh, you just stabbed x or whacked y over the head with a two-by-four.. but I’ll let you off this one time… because I can tell that you are in crisis…
=
You guessed it…
0
You cannot not arrest someone (or have someone arrested) because you are concerned about ”community relationships”. I am honestly not sure what you were even thinking when you posted that. Are you suggesting that nurses and other medical professionals will lose the public’s trust if we send the signal that it’s not acceptable to physically assault us or threaten us? Even if that were the case, and I don’t think it is, should we all just become some self-sacrificing punching bag/doormat in order to preserve the ”relationship”?
The reason the conversation steered onto violence was because another poster replied to my comments to the OP by saying that this is the same kind of logic that is used to justify domestic violence. My comment that the poster found to be evidence of the kind of logic used to justify domestic violence was:
"You seem not to be distinguishing between normal times and these extreme Covid times. Of course patients and their family members are more stressed during Covid times and are in crisis more. What would anyone expect? I'm not saying that aggressive behavior, or threats to staff, is acceptable behavior; I'm saying that I understand the huge frustrations that lead to these kinds of behavior."
On 12/13/2021 at 4:19 PM, Susie2310 said:
"No-one has said that family members have the right to treat anyone badly. But how can family members behave "normally" if they are under the huge stressors that I have already stated? "
In neither of these comments did I make any statement that maltreatment/violence by patients/family members is acceptable.
Then JKL33 jumped in to talk about the maltreatment nurses have been receiving from patients and how I am apparently supportive of nurses maltreatment by patients/family members and am unsupportive of nurses.
So, yes, I concluded that people who jumped in to berate me when I was replying to the OP were primarily concerned with violence towards nurses by patients/family members.
In regard to your comment above, this is a public nursing forum. I am a member of this forum and I am qualified to post here and I have every right to reply to a comment that is publicly posted; the same right as you do in fact. So, yes, "I showed up and I replied to the OP," as is my right to do as a member of a public forum; that is what one can expect on a public forum; one makes a comment and one receives a reply from another member.
It's also unnecessary to educate me in the proper forms for arresting people, etc; such information is hardly relevant to the OP's topic. I already explained why I used such examples; they were merely examples not a discourse on proper law enforcement practices.
Specializes in New Critical care NP, Critical care, Med-surg, LTC.
4 hours ago, Iluvnightshift said:
How come when folks present the fatality rate,they never talk about the millions left with long covid or disabilities?
That's also a very good point, mortality and morbidity are not always presented together. And those that are living with the long term effects, and their loved ones, would also present a very cautionary tale. Unfortunately, very few people these days are willing to listen if they've already made their choice.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
19 minutes ago, JBMmom said:
That's also a very good point, mortality and morbidity are not always presented together. And those that are living with the long term effects, and their loved ones, would also present a very cautionary tale. Unfortunately, very few people these days are willing to listen if they've already made their choice.
My youngest sibling's significant other has been unable to be weaned from the ventilator after developing post-covid Guillian-Barre syndrome. 3 months she's been hospitalized. My sibling is still in complete denial about the severity of this pandemic. He still misrepresents vaccination rates and the effectiveness of vaccines at preventing serious illness and death. I don't argue with him but I won't be bullied or manipulated into not responding to his misinformation with actual facts and data. He's not a victim of anything except right wing except propaganda and his own bad judgement.
How come when folks present the fatality rate,they never talk about the millions left with long covid or disabilities?
Because relevant information and logic don't support a flawed, politically based ideology.
That statistic is possibly one of the least relevant components of this crisis. Those deaths have nothing to do with my patient who lay in his own poop for an extra hour till I could get help, or that heparin drip that was stopped for god knows how long, or the fact that one of the reasons I just supported switching my aunt to palliative care is to avoid her being subject to the kind of crappy care I am currently providing to patients. None of this has anything to do with survival rates of Covid.
Most people survive Covid. Most people also survive bilateral femur fractures. So what?
think the anger at visitor restrictions/limitations is understandable. I think another fly in the ointment is that some health care workers refused to be vaccinated without true medical contraindications and continued to take care of patients, while patients' family members, who may have been fully vaccinated and fully compliant with mask wearing/social distancing, were prevented from being with their loved one, advocating for them, and providing them with support.
This is so true and even though I understand the rationale behind not allowing family visits, I believe it is cruel and unusual punishment. It is wrong to let someone die without family present. If we can allow visitors to MRSA and Cdiff rooms, we can do the same for Covid while following all the necessary precautions.
JBMmom, MSN, NP
4 Articles; 2,537 Posts
That was not even close to my intended discussion post initially. I was initially wondering out loud to my husband whether the current political climate had influenced the course of the pandemic. Then he quoted me statistics about the mortality rate, pointing out that it is actually very low. And then I was hit with the clarity that statistics DO NOT tell the whole heartbreaking story about this pandemic because those people that died ARE my pandemic experience.
Later in the discussion I did mention that there has been an associated increase in patients that appear to distrust us as caregivers, are resistant to our attempts to help them, and have even accused us of fabricating their illness for some perceived benefit to the hospital. There have been more family members expressing similar views, and then I pointed out one family where there was a threat of violence. Not the main point of my discussion at all.
I love my job. The day that I posted the initial post I left with 10/12 patients COVID positive and on ventilators. Since that post three of them have died. We have one, maybe two, that we think may pull through with a trach and peg and months to years of therapy ahead. I'm not near a breaking point as you had perceived, I am, however, frustrated that some of what we're experiencing appears to have been avoidable through available vaccination. That was my whole point. There are others here that share similar experiences, so I was just looking for feedback.