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Jeff Roberson and Jim Salter reported for The Associated Press on the Covid situation in Missouri. They spoke to Dr. Shane Wilson who works at a small 25-bed hospital in the rural northeast corner of the state.
Wilson’s coronavirus routine can be like that of a big hospital in a big city – doing its rounds in masks and gloves, with zippered plastic walls between the hallways and using hand sanitizer as he enters and leaves each room. But there is a glaring difference. Born and raised in Memphis, a city of just 1,800 people, Wilson knows most of his patients by first name.
He visits a woman who was a gymnastics teacher at her school and later remembers laughing a day when she caught him smoking at school and made him pick up cigarette butts with a friend as punishment. In November, Wilson treated his own father, who along with his wife worked in the same hospital. Wilson, 74, has recovered from the virus.
With the United States now averaging more than 170,000 new cases every day, it is wreaking havoc from larger hospitals to smaller ones, like Scotland County Hospital. The tragedy is smaller here, more intimate. Everyone knows everyone.
Memphis is the largest city for miles and miles and people come to the hospital from six surrounding counties. Doctors at Scotland County Hospital are already making difficult and often heartbreaking decisions about who to treat. Wilson said some moderately ill people were sent home with oxygen and said, “If things get worse, come back, but we have a place to put you and we have no place to transfer you.
Meanwhile, the staff shortage is so severe that the hospital has appealed for anyone with healthcare experience, including retirees, to come to work. Several have responded and are already on staff, including a woman who works as a licensed practical nurse while studying to become a registered nurse.
The hospital’s chief nursing officer, Elizabeth Guffey, said nurses worked up to 24 extra hours a week. Guffey sometimes sleeps in an office rather than coming home between shifts.
“We’re in peak capacity almost 100% of the time,” Guffey said. “Everything is therefore on the bridge.”
It is especially difficult to see friends and relatives battling the disease when a large majority of the community still does not take it seriously, she said.
“We spend our time indoors taking care of these very sick people, and then we go outside and hear people tell us that the disease is a hoax or that it doesn’t really exist,” said Guffey.
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