America desperately seeks nurses and doctors to fight coronavirus

Since the coronavirus invaded the United States, Sara Houze has been traveling. He goes from hospital to hospital to treat patients with Covid-19 who are on the verge of death.

A Washington intensive care unit nurse specializing in heart rhythm, airway and pain management, Houze is in high demand as infections and hospitalizations increase. She is one of more than 500 nurses, doctors and other health professionals hired by the California government to work in hospitals unable to cope with the number of coronavirus cases.

Houze began a six-week stay at a San Bernardino hospital, 60 miles east of Los Angeles, on Monday and is ready to face 14 hour days with a heavier work than usual. San Bernardino County has 1,545 people in hospitals and more than 125 in temporary facilities, used when the hospital runs out of space.

“I know many patients will die. This is my experience: they die, I put them in bags, the room is cleaned and another patient arrives, ”said the woman.

Much of California no longer has intensive care beds and the state is desperately looking for some 3,000 temporary workers in the health sector to fill the holes. Authorities in California, along with other states facing similar staff shortages, are looking for people in countries like Australia and Taiwan, particularly nurses and nurses who specialize in critically ill patients.

“Infections are growing across the country and no one is able to provide nurses,” said Dr. Janet Coffman, professor of public policy at the University of California, San Francisco.

California hospitals typically use agencies through which they secure reserve personnel during flu season. It is the only state in the country that requires one nurse for two patients in intensive care and one for four patients in the emergency room.

These requirements, however, are ignored by the explosion of infections coronavirus.

The demand for nurses traveling from one site to another increased by 44% last month, especially in California, Texas, New York, Florida and Minnesota, according to Aya Healtchare of San Diego, a of two companies hired by the California government to meet hospital staffing needs.

“We recruit en masse and work hard,” said Sophia Morris, vice president of Aya Healthcare.

California Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr Mark Ghaly said the state “is fortunate to have two-thirds” of the temporary staff it needs.

Things have changed a lot since the spring (second quarter) when Newsom ordered the first lockdown of the United States. The infections subsided, and street workers from California traveled to New York City to help.

This time, many hospitals are delay unnecessary operations, according to Jan Emerson-Shea, spokesperson for the California Hospital Association. The state has opened alternative structures to take care of people with less serious problems in order to have more beds available for the most serious patients in hospitals.

This means that hospitals have less staff for intensive care unitsCoffman said. In contrast, many hospital staff contracted the virus or had to quarantine themselves for coming into contact with an infected person.

To complete it, many nurses aged 60 and over have stopped working for fear of contagion, according to the University of California at San Francisco.

On Monday, more than 17,000 people were hospitalized with confirmed cases of Covid – more than double the previous maximum, in July – and more than 3,600 patients were in intensive care.

Makeshift hospitals

Dr. Marc Futernick, a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians in Los Angeles, helped install a temporary center to see patients in a hospital in this city, but stresses that “it will not be able to open this time. There would be no staff to manage it.

Ghaly, state director of health and human services, said parts of California they might run out of space even in alternative rooms “Towards the end of December or the beginning of January”. To prevent this from happening, they are setting up field hospitals in gymnasiums and stadiums and referring patients to hospitals with empty beds.

The state is updating its guidelines on what hospitals should do if they are overwhelmed. A document recently distributed to doctors at four Los Angeles County hospitals raised a change of strategyInstead of doing everything to save all the patients, save as many as possible. In other words, target those who are not so severe at the expense of those who have little chance of survival.

Houze said he participates in a virtual community that offers webinars about the trauma this all represents.

“Patients who have not been intubated, as well as those who are intubated, do not receive the usual care because there are not enough resources and there is no time for everyone,” said deplored Houze. “It’s very disheartening.”

Por Daisy Nguyen, The Associated Press

CB