‘A game of Russian roulette’: Victoria’s Alfred hospital expects 15% staff absent at Covid peak
One of Victoria’s largest public hospitals, the Alfred, predicts as many as 15% of its staff may be unavailable because of Covid with the Omicron wave expected to last for up to another eight weeks.
Staff at the hospital, which includes Australia’s largest intensive care unit, were told in an email on Friday from the chief executive, Andrew Way, to prepare for rising demand just as the available workforce was decreasing. The Alfred now has more than 50 patients in ICU, or about twice the next largest hospital in Victoria.
“This week, approximately 7% of our workforce was confirmed Covidpositive and many others are furloughed due to household exposures,” Way said in the email. “With the current wave expected to run for another 6-8 weeks, we expect 10-15% of our staff to be unavailable to work at its peak.”
Way requested that all “patient-facing staff ” postpone leave scheduled from now until late February. “Over the next 6 weeks we need as many of our patient-facing staff who can work to do so, supporting colleagues and patients through this wave,” he said.
The email came as Victoria reported on Saturday a record 51,356 new Covid cases although health authorities said almost half (26,428) were rapid antigen tests (RAT). Many of those were taken earlier in the week.
All states bar Western Australia are posting big increases in Covid cases. New South Wales hospitals are bracing for a tripling of Covid patients within weeks that will likely challenge their capacity.
Within the Alfred, though, staff are already concerned that care is being compromised.
“The quality of care being delivered is suboptimal – no fault of any staff – we are just told to ensure vitals stable, medicate and move on, leaving a lot of vulnerable patients neglected,” one staffer told Guardian Australia.
“It’s also like a game of Russian roulette with potentially [Covid-] positive staff members and at-risk patients [mixing],” said the staffer, who was not authorised to speak publicly. “The self surveillance staff Covid tests are almost 4 to 5 days behind.”
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A whole range of patients were exposed. “[It’s] essentially a death sentence if they catch it off us,” the person said. “There’s no RAT tests for us to exclude ourselves prior to starting shift or even coming to the hospital. We just find out when we are on the ward or have worked multiple shifts infecting patients and staff alike.”
Recent graduate and first-year nurses were also performing work normally reserved for those with at least two years’ experience.
“Beforehand graduate nurses were not even allowed to check medications with other graduate nurses,” the staffer said. “Now we are so short-staffed they are checking dangerous medications on their own.”
A separate email to some Alfred staff on Wednesday stated “all clinical areas in Alfred Health are reducing [nurse-patient] ratios”.
“Please be mindful and support each other to do the best you can do,” the manager said. “We know that things will get missed and you might not be able to do or achieve everything you want to do.
“What’s most important right now is to look after each other to do the best we can with what we have,” the manager said.
The Alfred was approached for comment.