Hmm, I’ve hired a NJ nurse to do something for me this Saturday (virtually, and not related to nursing – he has other hobbies.) I hope he can make it.
Yikes! That would have freaked me out.
Best wishes for your BIL, and the rest of your family.
I think things vary a bit from hospital to hospital. My BIL is in a hospital that sounds like a war zone. The ICU (where he is) is filled to capacity. Meanwhile, my daughter is a nurse in a hospital around 150 miles from there, and it is business as usual.
It is freaking loco that they’re not sharing patient load.
That’s a 300 mile round trip for the ambulance. Half of that empty.
Kayaker, sorry, didn’t know things had become so dire - hoping for a full recovery.
And carrying a patient that needs to be in an ICU now, not 4 ours from now. There are such things as mobile almost-ICU vehicles. But they’re a tiny minority of all ambulances.
Various posters, albeit not @FigNorton, have blithely asserted we only need to manage ICU beds on a national basis since it’s easy to transport patients anywhere in the country to match headcounts to bedcounts.
Reality will soon enough invalidate that silly delusion. At which point it’ll be relabeled a failure of case management, not of logistical reality when moving large headcounts of critically ill people.
Well, that sure isn’t what I’m talking about. 150 miles is pretty local. New York specifically organized their hospitals into a single network when they were in it deep. And it’s not driving an ICU patient from one hospital to another- it’s splitting the initial admissions more evenly so no one gets overwhelmed.
Many/most? people don’t get to the hospital until things have become dire.
I’m sorry, are you saying that’s an argument against setting up regional hospital networks for this emergency?
I’m saying that “splitting the initial admissions more evenly” may not be an option.
For any one specific patient, sure. But overall, it’s workable. You don’t think one hospital being in a warzone and one 150 miles away being business as usual isn’t something to be worked on? It’s a failure of leadership to not temporarily substitute a public network for the private structure. Not saying people don’t get paid but make transfer of patients between systems non-negotiable pending end of surge.
But this isn’t the place to discuss all that! Sorry, kayaker. My best wishes for your family.
It isn’t just ambulance, rooms and beds. A room and a bed does you no good without enough nurses and respiratory therapists experienced in running the very specialized equipment required. We’re running out of nurses and doctors more than beds.
You can repurpose a factory to churn out more ventilators. You can’t churn out more nurses and doctors in a few months.
My BIL and his siblings are a good example of this. My BIL passed out in the ER’s waiting room. Two of his brothers each collapsed at work. A sister passed out while blow drying her hair.
Things aren’t looking good in general. My daughter is a nurse in Labor&Delivery. She was offered a raise to transfer to Infectious Disease, and she turned it down. When asked what she’d do if transferred anyway, she said she’d take early retirement (she’s 30).
Thanks everyone for the kind words.
My BIL was discharged and is now at home. He is still a mess, requiring oxygen by mask and a visit by a home-nurse daily. His doctor said his discharge was in part due to demand for beds in the COVID unit and ICU.
He also has a COVID-19 sequela I hadn’t heard of, sudden complete hearing loss.
Woh. That’s a new one to me too.
Our RN daughter occasionally works a COVID unit. Usually she is in a cardiac step down unit.
After her first COVID shift in April she called home and told her mother to be extremely careful because there was no way anyone would want to be in a COVID ICU.
As of yesterday, the US had just over 27,000 “serious critical” COVID patients. I assume that means ICU. That 27K number had hovered around 14K over the summer, but has soared since the beginning of November.
We hit the 3K death mark today.