Staff Shortages Imminent Due to Covid 19 Surge

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I wonder if I’m still on the emergency call list for our hospital lab? I should check and see. I retired three years ago but at the start of the pandemic, I was contacted to see if I’d be willing to return in an emergency situation of staffing. Luckily, I wasn’t contacted!
 
And yet I know three nurses laid off because of a lack of need in their units.

. . . .
 
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Not necessarily.

Certain units, like outpatient surgery and the more “voluntary” needs aren’t seeing as much patient traffic.

A lot of hospitals fast-tracked a specialty training for ICU staff, but sometimes there still weren’t enough nurses to meet demand.

So I personally knew nurse in both categories—working too many shifts, or not enough shifts.
 
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RhodesianSon said:
And yet I know three nurses laid off because of a lack of need in their units.

This all such a load of crap.
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@OScarlette_nidiyilii answered you and I will just add that nursing has many sub specialities. Covid units need nurses with a level of experience and training that OB nurses, orthopedic nurses, etc aren’t qualified for. As elective surgery and outpatient services get cut back due to overwhelming number of Covid cases, those other types of nurses will be laid off. If any are cross trained in critical or emergency care…they will be reassigned.
 
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I understand that. But instead of laying people off would it not make more sense to train them where they’re needed if there’s a shortage? When I worked in a restaurant if we were short on waiters we dragged up busboys. I know that’s not a 1:1 analogy but it makes more sense than firing the dishwasher.
 
Yes, but there would be a lag time for training.
One does not simply go from a low-tech care setting into an ICU with so many machines and treatments and dangerous medicines…

And some nurses chose the lower tech jobs (clinics, school nursing, home health care) so they can be home more with family (also they don’t make as much $$$).

(A lot of the issues are really outside of the scope of a theology forum, but doctor and nurse forums make for interesting lurking LOL)
 
My daughter in law is a nurse at the main Covid hospital in nky. She said they’re full but it’s mostly people suffering complications from other issues.

Their ICU typically stays 80% full regardless, so while they’re “at capacity” it’s not all Covid. Only a small portion is. That’s the part of the story that doesn’t get told much from what I can see.
 
RhodesianSon said:
But instead of laying people off would it not make more sense to train them where they’re needed if there’s a shortage?
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That would make more sense but we treat health care as a business in this country. Hopefully this is a wake up call for the 30% of the country that doesn’t support a government-run health care system.
 
RhodesianSon said:
My daughter in law is a nurse at the main Covid hospital in nky. She said they’re full but it’s mostly people suffering complications from other issues.

Their ICU typically stays 80% full regardless, so while they’re “at capacity” it’s not all Covid. Only a small portion is. That’s the part of the story that doesn’t get told much from what I can see.
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As the title of the thread says, it’s the staff shortages, not the bed capacity. Covid care takes a lot of staff time, and many of the staff or out sick or having to quarantine because of exposure. It is doing a great disservice to the hard-working nurses and doctors who have been run ragged for 8 months to downplay the seriousness of the situation calling it a load of crap.
 
I was a Medical Technologist in a hospital lab. To train an experienced tech took about 6months in chemistry, hematology, urines and coagulation. An inexperienced tech took a year to get up to speed.

I would assumes an ICU nurse would take about 6months to a year as well. They would be able to help within maybe a month or two but to handle a full shift on their own?
 
If this is the emergency they claim it is, with the duration they claim it’s going to last, surely that would be worth the time? If they’d started it in March they’d have a lot more nurses available now. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people crying about a problem they’re not attempting to mitigate. They’ve had 8 months to expand capacity for care, which is what the whole “two weeks to flatten the curve” was supposed to be about. Buying the hospitals time to gear up. Seems they didn’t bother to do it.
 
From experience, an ICU, PICU, and NICU all utilize respiratory therapists. They usually handle the intubation, the weaning off vents, the administration of nebulizer treatments, C-Pap machines and all the other equipment that someone in respiratory distress would need.

That’s a separate job and training than an RN.
 
F_Marturana said:
From experience, an ICU, PICU, and NICU all utilize respiratory therapists. They usually handle the intubation, the weaning off vents, the administration of nebulizer treatments, C-Pap machines and all the other equipment that someone in respiratory distress would need.

That’s a separate job and training than an RN.
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That’s true…for the respiratory component. There are also the meds, patient care and charting to do as well as coordinating the respiratory care. Additionally, to @RhodesianSon point, training while also working…especially if short staffed…is really hard on the working nurses.

Also, hospitals don’t especially like to pay for extra nurses learning an ICU job for a temporary situation. These are top dollar nurses. Hospital admins are notoriously cheapskates. Most of the time, if they have a shortage, they’ll contract nurses for set periods of time. I have a feeling not many contract nurses are anxious to work Covid wards.

I know our lab has used contract techs to fill in gaps until they can hire…techs are becoming nonexistent these days…and while management likes to save money on them, the bench techs find they’re a nightmare…we have to do our job and theirs while training them…an almost impossible task…and a bit scary, honestly. Mistakes will be made!

I would assume respiratory techs are in short supply right now as well as any other position associated with the ER, ICU, labs and probably even XRay! Hospitals have been running on minimum staff for a long time now. This pandemic possibility was always poo pooed as a concern…oooops!
 
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No wonder, with a pandemic denier in the White House. One would expect the man who holds the most powerful position in the world would take the pandemic seriously. But he didn’t and that will be his legacy imo.
 
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It would be interesting to see what the hospitals CEOs actually have done to ramp up, if anything? I know they certainly wailed about having to stop non emergency surgeries and out patient services and claiming they were going broke for it. Face it, hospitals are a business as seen from top management practices. It’s the healthcare workers that actually care about patient care and safety.

Part of the problem is they had no idea if we were actually going to get a second wave and when…asking them to spend money if it never materialized is just not in management’s nature.
 
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