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Nevilledog

(50,659 posts)
Mon Jan 10, 2022, 02:15 PM Jan 2022

As an E.R. Doctor, I Fear Health Care Collapse More Than Omicron





https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/opinion/omicron-covid-er.html

No paywall
https://archive.fo/ytN2y

*snip*

And even though nearly all of my patients are experiencing milder illness compared with March 2020, they still take up the same amount of space in a hospital bed. Right now, all patients with the coronavirus require isolation, so they don’t infect other patients, and the laborious use of personal protective equipment by health workers. Yes, there’s a fraction of patients who are incidentally found to have the virus — for example, a person needing an appendix removed who tests positive on screening. But entering the hospital with the virus versus for the virus isn’t a relevant distinction if the hospital doesn’t have the beds or providers needed to care for its patients.

This influx of coronavirus-positive patients is also creating another source of infection for health care workers, who are being sidelined in numbers I’ve never seen before. In March 2020, we clamored for critical supplies like masks and gowns. When patients piled up, we built makeshift treatment centers in tents, sports stadiums and floating ships. What’s in critically short supply now is health care providers, and qualified staff members are significantly harder to scale up than supplies or space.

Thankfully, nearly all my colleagues on the front line are now vaccinated, so I am not worried that I will see them coming into the E.R. as patients or dying, as some did in 2020. But many hospitals are seeing their highest levels of employee infections of the pandemic. Some hospitals in the United States have lost 15 percent of their work force or more.

When a health care worker falls ill, another steps in to cover the shifts. But there are only so many of us. Updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that shortens isolation time after testing positive for the virus allows health care workers to return to work earlier. This may help. But in some places, like Rhode Island and California, severe staffing shortages have led to contingency plans that allow providers still testing positive to return to work. Sending potentially contagious nurses or doctors to treat patients seems inconsistent with the principle of “first, do no harm.” But the alternative is that patients wait longer for care, or worse, there isn’t a provider to care for them at all. These are awful decisions to make two years into the pandemic.

*snip*


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As an E.R. Doctor, I Fear Health Care Collapse More Than Omicron (Original Post) Nevilledog Jan 2022 OP
this raises a question in my mind Grasswire2 Jan 2022 #1
It's actually up. dalton99a Jan 2022 #2

Grasswire2

(13,564 posts)
1. this raises a question in my mind
Mon Jan 10, 2022, 02:53 PM
Jan 2022

How's the enrollment at nursing schools? And for respiratory therapists?

Down? Or up?

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