I work at a 300 bed rural Pennsylvania hospital. We are being hit. They are floating med surg, OR, and peds staff to ICU to work as helping hands or take the least sick patients (no drips or vents) that has never happened, not in swine flu, not our major ECMO use flus, never. I have tripled, I have worked extra shifts, I have offered my first born to nurses to come in- but I have never seen non critical care nurses used in the units. I have not worked ICU in my current hospital, only low acuity family health services (maternity, peds, etc) ICU is starting to put me on the schedule because I wasn't getting enough hours in FHS. (Our covid kids have been stabilizing quickly and ready for DC in a couple days)
Your actual question. I used to work in a city hospital, bedroom community to NYC. My friends there and my friends in the city are extremely busy. It's truly unprecedented. hospitals are pretty much as shown on TV (although the media does gloss over some great recovery stories and extubation celebrations) I even have a friend who is in a community health clinic and they are constantly seeing symptomatic patients and doing testing (he's one of my nurse friends who has been covid+, so far, all my nurse friends have done well)