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Arkansas healthcare workers are starting to quit as cases of staff shortages and burnout continue to rise in the state.
Dr Cam Patterson, University of Arkansas chancellor for medical sciences, told CNN several staff left their posts in the middle of a shift and some are considering retiring early then that they are struggling to cope with the demands of the coronavirus and its variants. place on them.
“The teams are stretched. People are frustrated. People are very tired,” Patterson said, noting that morale among healthcare workers was low. “We have lost a significant number of positions here because we just don’t have enough nurses that we can recruit to come here and help us take care of the patients.”
According to Patterson, nearly 360 healthcare provider positions are currently vacant within UAMS. About 230 of those vacancies are for nurses, CNN reported.
Patterson said UAMS has offered to pay signing bonuses of up to $ 25,000, but even that has had little effect on nurses who say their mental health and well- be have taken their toll.
“I had times where I sat in my car and cried before I came to work,” Takela Gardner, a registered nurse at a UAMS facility in Little Rock, told CNN. “I … literally just sat there and cried because I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.”
Gardner told the outlet that the coronavirus pandemic began just eight months after starting her nursing career, forcing her to learn the role quickly.
Greg Thompson, executive director of the Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services, reiterated the stress the virus has placed on healthcare workers, noting that calls for ambulance services have seen an “almost daily” increase over the past two years. last months.
“Normally we’ll make around 300, 400 calls a day, and our transports are normally around 200. We’re running around 260 or more a day right now,” Thompson told CNN, adding that sometimes hospitals will not have enough beds to accommodate new patients.
“There are times when we go into the ER and there just isn’t a bed, so we’ll just have to hold the patient on our bed against the wall, waiting for something to come off so they can. withdraw it, “he said. . “Normally we should be able to be out of the hospital in less than 30 minutes. But sometimes we see extremes of an hour to three hours.”
Arkansas has reported more than 394,400 coronavirus cases and about 6,230 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins. Less than 40 percent of the state’s population has been fully immunized against the virus.
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