"The Calm Before The Storm" Laying Nurses Off To Prepare For A Pandemic Surge

[NurseB.MN]

Hospitals and Nurses Are Overwhelmed

Throughout the US many hospitals are overwhelmed with the ongoing pandemic of the COVID-19 virus. They are short-staffed on nurses forcing them to work long overtime hours. Many are so overwhelmed that they are hiring travel nurses to make up for the shortage. I am currently an RN at a hospital in Minneapolis MN and am experiencing the complete opposite of this.

Social-Distancing?

I work on a floor consisting mainly of elective, emergent as well as non- emergent surgeries. A little over two weeks ago all elective surgeries were postponed and absolutely no patient visitors are allowed in the hospital. Initially they told us this decision was made to promote people to stay home (social distancing) and to conserve hospital beds, ventilators, monitors and other critical supplies that will be needed for this pandemic. This has left the hospital quiet and very empty compared to the normal chaos of the typical daily pace. Patients are anxious and feeling alone not being able to have family members with them for support. Family members are confused and scared, constantly calling to get updates on their loved ones’ condition. As nurses we are taking on a lot of stress relaying messages between doctors and families, consoling people that are sad or upset, and trying to be positive to help shed some light on this situation.

Hospitals are Unprepared

It seems as though the hospital did not know how to prepare for this type of crisis. After the first influx of patients being tested it took weeks to figure out where they would put these patients and how we would get proper protective equipment. They now have elected one of our medical floors to take all of the COVID rule-out and positive tested patients. In addition, some ICU beds have been dedicated to caring for the critically ill patients needing ventilators. You can see and hear the frustration with this decision because now all the responsibility to care for these patients is only on a select few units. They are putting themselves as well as their families at risk to be exposed to this virus. While these nurses are hard at work and in a high-stress environment, other floors have completely shut down or decreased their patient populations immensely. This includes the OR, care suites, surgical specialties, orthopedic and observation units. This last week many nurses have been called off to stay home or put on low need due to the decreased census of patients throughout the hospital. Nurses are being floated every day to sit at door entrances for hours, screening visitors trying to enter the hospital. Other nurses are teaching classes about how to put on and take off PPE equipment. Some are walking around going to every unit basically begging to find any place they can help. I have done so myself and can speak for most of the nurses that we all feel a little useless not being able to care for patients.

Financial Struggle Equals Threat of Lay-Off

This week we received notice that the hospital is struggling financially due to this pandemic. No surgeries and a major decrease in admissions mean no money coming into the system. In the next month they will be cutting back nurses’ hours, laying people off, or paying them a minimum of 50% of their FTE. The rationale for this is to conserve the hospital revenue as much as they can; all to prepare and utilize it to stock up on PPE equipment for the upcoming months when COVID numbers are expected to skyrocket.

Calm Before the Storm?

It is uneasy and hard to tell if this is truly the calm before the storm or if many nurses will have to apply for unemployment alongside a large number of other Americans. People see the news and expect all US nurses to be the ones on the front line helping patients and communities through this crisis. It is truly heartbreaking to feel that you may have to look for a new job at the end of this or could be thrown back into a completely unorganized surge of ill patients, without proper training or equipment. Nurses are full of anxiety and on edge not knowing what the future holds for us in our career. This pandemic is truly affecting everyone in a different way, causing lots of uncertainty and stress. I just hope that some clarity can be shed soon so we can properly prepare for this and try to prevent the spread of this virus to our population and healthcare workers.

[givemeanurse]

We are all affected in a way. I think some nurses experience being pulled out from their area because there are no patients to cater making them on stand by . Private hospitals maybe implementing these lay offs because business is poor; no patients equals no cash thus cutting employees is one way of surviving. But then nurses are put in a situation of being left out . Now, public hospitals are crying for all nurses to come in this " Covid Fight " however the laid off nurses can't just go in there with no assurance of security ;financially or protective suits.

[onegoodnerve]

I live in metro Atlanta and our hospital has implemented a "re-deployment initiative" to pull nurses to the Covid units. Right now it's mostly nurses from OR, PACU, and outpatient side but it could expand. I have friend who works in mgmt at a Dr's office who has been "drafted" to the med-surg floor. I work in Psych and there has been whispers of us having to get floated as well. Needless to say nurses are panicking as most of them have no other experience outside of psych. I have M/S and tele experience but I haven't worked the floor in over 5 years and don't like the idea of possibly being forced back into it

[Subee2, BSN, MSN, CRNA]

On 4/7/2020 at 12:54 PM, emmjayy said:

So.... I was laid off from my job in an elective procedural area a few weeks ago (I'm in NYS, for perspective). I was told at the time that we were going to get a massive surge of patients and that I would be redeployed back to the ICU from whence I came (I just left the ICU within the past couple of months). Cool, I don't mind temporarily going back to help with a national public health emergency. The days went by, the cases in my county ticked up at a glacially slow pace, as of today we have a whopping 350 cases in a county of half a million people. We have had 5 deaths. Our hospitals are bleeding money, the hospital I am based at is like a ghost town. We had 12 patients in our COVID ICU this weekend, 4 of whom transferred to a regular COVID floor because they were doing better. Our number of new cases is dropping daily. Statewide, the same thing is happening. The only hospitals that are swamped are those in the NYC area, and let's be real - those hospitals are a zoo to start with, given that NYC doesn't have enough hospitals to care for its population even on a good day.

Meanwhile, we have our governor essentially fear-mongering about this. We have him seizing ventilators and considering DRAFTING healthcare workers to go work wearing trashbags as protection in NYC. We have people calling the cops on their neighbors for letting their kids play outside together, and snitching on those businesses that are trying to remain open to pay the bills and keep their employees from becoming jobless. This economy was due for a correction, sure, but this isn't a correction - this is a government-created crapfest that needs to end immediately. The media has VERY irresponsibly invoked panic in the general population, refusing to focus on the fact that the vast majority of known infected people recover without requiring hospitalization. Instead, we get news article after news article obscuring details - "27 year old, healthy man dies of COVID!" when said man was MORBIDLY obese. Or, "Healthy grandfather dies of COVID!" then admitting later in the article that healthy grandpa had "a few" underlying conditions. Cut the crap. In the words of FDR - "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

You are ridiculous. This event that you are trying to downplay will cost everyone a.fortune in tax burdens when this is over. Worst even, it could have been largely prevented if we tested people aggressively in February. I'm glad that your small hospital has not been affected. That's very nice for you.

[mumarada, BSN, RN]

On 4/8/2020 at 6:09 PM, chare said:

Source?

Washington DC is asking for volunteers

https://dchealth.dc.gov/mrc

[cartwrk]

On 4/7/2020 at 10:54 AM, emmjayy said:

So.... I was laid off from my job in an elective procedural area a few weeks ago (I'm in NYS, for perspective). I was told at the time that we were going to get a massive surge of patients and that I would be redeployed back to the ICU from whence I came (I just left the ICU within the past couple of months). Cool, I don't mind temporarily going back to help with a national public health emergency. The days went by, the cases in my county ticked up at a glacially slow pace, as of today we have a whopping 350 cases in a county of half a million people. We have had 5 deaths. Our hospitals are bleeding money, the hospital I am based at is like a ghost town. We had 12 patients in our COVID ICU this weekend, 4 of whom transferred to a regular COVID floor because they were doing better. Our number of new cases is dropping daily. Statewide, the same thing is happening. The only hospitals that are swamped are those in the NYC area, and let's be real - those hospitals are a zoo to start with, given that NYC doesn't have enough hospitals to care for its population even on a good day.

Meanwhile, we have our governor essentially fear-mongering about this. We have him seizing ventilators and considering DRAFTING healthcare workers to go work wearing trashbags as protection in NYC. We have people calling the cops on their neighbors for letting their kids play outside together, and snitching on those businesses that are trying to remain open to pay the bills and keep their employees from becoming jobless. This economy was due for a correction, sure, but this isn't a correction - this is a government-created crapfest that needs to end immediately. The media has VERY irresponsibly invoked panic in the general population, refusing to focus on the fact that the vast majority of known infected people recover without requiring hospitalization. Instead, we get news article after news article obscuring details - "27 year old, healthy man dies of COVID!" when said man was MORBIDLY obese. Or, "Healthy grandfather dies of COVID!" then admitting later in the article that healthy grandpa had "a few" underlying conditions. Cut the crap. In the words of FDR - "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

I agree completely. Our small rural hospital has been slow for last month. It's not sustainable. This is a media induced panic because they hate our president. It's also agenda-driven. I honestly don't trust the CDC, WHO, Fauci, Bill Gates or big pharma at all. Yes, I sound like a conspiracy theorist. But sometimes there's truth to them, and people in the healthcare field need to wake up.

Can this virus be horrible? Of course it can, but we should not shut down the entire economy and usher in a recession over this. Shut downs should be decided on a local (city/county) level, not statewide.

And Dr Birx herself admitted that anyone who dies "with Covid19 died OF Covid19", so can we even trust the death numbers?

I'm thankful I work in OB, but feel sorry for nurses unable to work and all the "non-essential" workers.

[Subee2, BSN, MSN, CRNA]

On 4/12/2020 at 7:10 PM, cartwrk said:

I agree completely. Our small rural hospital has been slow for last month. It's not sustainable. This is a media induced panic because they hate our president. It's also agenda-driven. I honestly don't trust the CDC, WHO, Fauci, Bill Gates or big pharma at all. Yes, I sound like a conspiracy theorist. But sometimes there's truth to them, and people in the healthcare field need to wake up.

Can this virus be horrible? Of course it can, but we should not shut down the entire economy and usher in a recession over this. Shut downs should be decided on a local (city/county) level, not statewide.

And Dr Birx herself admitted that anyone who dies "with Covid19 died OF Covid19", so can we even trust the death numbers?

I'm thankful I work in OB, but feel sorry for nurses unable to work and all the "non-essential" workers.

Don't be smug just yet. The rural areas just haven't been hit ....yet. It just takes one person to do a lot of damage when they go to church that insists on business as usual to spread rapidly. The curves are still pretty steep and we may have many months of spread in front of us. If the government had told the entire country instead just the Congress on January 27th that it was too late to stop this, it needn't have come to this. One of my former hospitals of about 145 beds had to expand their 40 Covid beds to another 40 bed unit on another floor. The older OR nurses ovr 60 are assigned Covid cases in the ICU and haven't done patient care in decades. The mothership hospital started sharing ventilators the first week. There isn't a larger hospital within 70 miles in any direction. This semi rural area just got hit a little later. And the small hospitals will get hit later than us.

[emmjayy, BSN, RN]

Deleted b/c it's not worth the fight.

[Subee2, BSN, MSN, CRNA]

It only took one soccer match in Northern Italy to wreak the havoc that they had to endure. Of course, 50,000 people attended:( I hope you are right and upstate NY will be spared. I have no problem with many people getting back to work, but we still don't have enough tests available. South Korea didn't have to shut down for a day because of testing and we knew that but didn't want stock market prices to fall. Don't worry that we are going to go into a recession...we are already there and left with the bill to pay. And the wealthy real estate investors, who got an enormous free pass on their taxes in this new stimulus package, won't be adding taxable income. Half of the country doesn't even pay federal income taxes. So who will pay for all this? Middle class folks like you and me. If we go back to work incautiously , we are only adding to our own financial doom. But I do agree that people who work solo should be able to work always. Rant over. Promise I'll quit:)

[Lpn-to-RN]

On 4/6/2020 at 11:07 AM, Wuzzie said:

The disconnect is disheartening. We are having to take low-census days using our vacation but are also being told that when the ? hits the fan then we'll be called back to work in-house in the ICU. They say they can't find "anything" for us to do now so they won't pay us but as soon as they desperately need us they'll be happy to pay us less than the in-patient nurses make to take on the same load and risk. I sort of feel like a mistress. ?

Same issue. Pulled from my outpatient setting to help cover inpatient. Last few shifts they have called off the regular inpatient nurses but kept me working. Why you ask, because I am paid less at outpatient wages. ? You always know in the back of your mind you don't really matter, but boy do they know how to point it out to you during a crisis.

[Wuzzie]

2 hours ago, Lpn-to-RN said:

Same issue. Pulled from my outpatient setting to help cover inpatient. Last few shifts they have called off the regular inpatient nurses but kept me working. Why you ask, because I am paid less at outpatient wages. ? You always know in the back of your mind you don't really matter, but boy do they know how to point it out to you during a crisis.

Fortunately for us our union stepped in and changes were made. We are no longer being forced to used our earned time off if we are sent home due to low census among other things. We are still being cross-trained but I don't have an issue with that as long as we have the same level of PPE as everyone else. The hospital will bump our pay to the same as the in-patient staff on the days (weeks, months ?) we are re-deployed. We are currently negotiating other benefits, such as crisis pay, although I'm not optimistic any of the additional items will fly. I feel very fortunate to be working in a union hospital. The benefit of having an organized system to fight for us proven over and over again to be worth the dues I pay.

[Curious1alwys, BSN, RN]

5 hours ago, Lpn-to-RN said:

Same issue. Pulled from my outpatient setting to help cover inpatient. Last few shifts they have called off the regular inpatient nurses but kept me working. Why you ask, because I am paid less at outpatient wages. ? You always know in the back of your mind you don't really matter, but boy do they know how to point it out to you during a crisis.

Ugh! Not cool but not surprising either.

[MarkMyWords]

Statistically, less than 1 percent chance exists of a normal average American getting this virus. I figured it for myself where I live in a large metro area and I am in a higher risk category. Practicing the precautions and mostly staying home, roughly about .1% perhaps as low as .008%. This changes slightly every day and will rise--depends where you live, work, age, race and if you have a weaker immune system, etc. The media will not report this, and I am glad they don't. Plenty of other news should be reported.