Health-care workers feeling the strain
“I'm exhausted,” Windsor Regional Hospital critical care physician Dr. Eli Malus said Wednesday. “It's a zoo.”
There were several COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit plus three or four more patients who may need ICU beds after surgery.
Windsor Regional had eight COVID-19 patients in total Monday. On Tuesday, the number jumped to 15.
It's also trying “desperately,” said Malus, to catch up on hundreds of surgeries postponed during the first wave.
“It's pretty challenging right now,” he said. “All of us are feeling the strain.”
Then there's the COVID-19 outbreak on the seventh floor of the Ouellette campus. The 60 beds are closed to new admissions. That ripples through the entire hospital. If other departments can't transfer patients there, they can't admit new patients, either. Windsor Regional was scrambling to ensure it could transfer patients to hospitals in Leamington and Chatham if necessary.
Twenty-six staff have tested positive in the last two weeks. Ten more are isolating because their children were exposed at school.
If more staff are unable to work, the hospital will face shortages in some specialties.
The sharp and widespread second wave and hospital outbreaks are making Malus nervous.
“I don't feel as safe as I did three months ago,” he said. “You can never let your guard down. It's very challenging to be on your game all the time.”
Some staff have moved into a downtown hotel again to protect their families.
On top of all that, patients' families can't visit them because of the outbreak.
“It's horrible,” said Malus. “You've got people dying, and no one can visit them.”
Nine months into the pandemic, there's mounting concern about fatigue and stress among health-care workers.
“We're concerned about their ongoing mental wellness, their ability to handle this protracted level of tension and anxiety,” said Hotel-dieu Grace Healthcare CEO Janice Kaffer. “All of us should be concerned about that for all our front-line workers.”
If they can't take care of us, who will?
“At the start you had a lot of adrenalin to keep you going,” said Windsor Regional CEO David Musyj. “You're past the point of adrenalin now. You're wondering, where's the end?”
Said Monica Staley Liang, a Windsor Regional vice-president, “Everyone comes here every day trying to do the right thing for our patients and our community, but people are human.”
Now they're also facing a vocal minority calling the pandemic a hoax and refusing to follow precautions. Windsor Regional employees found flyers on their cars last week advertising a rally protesting public health restrictions.
“Staff were upset,” said Musyj. “We'd just lost a patient in the ICU to COVID.”
“All of our staff are very, very tired,” Kaffer told the public health briefing Tuesday.
Six patients and 17 staff have been infected in an outbreak at Hotel-dieu.
Tempers are short sometimes. More staff are taking sick days. More are retiring.
“They're just not going to do it anymore,” Kaffer said.
She worries about infecting her husband. She can't see her grandchildren now. She's had little time off since March.
“Hold on,” she said, her voice breaking. She paused to collect herself.
When others worked from home, health-care workers continued going to work every day. Even during the brief lull in the summer, all the extra work of screening and donning and doffing masks, gowns and gloves continued. So did the uncertainty.
“There's an emotional cost to living our lives not knowing what's going to happen next,” Kaffer said.
Health care is a hard job, she said. But COVID on top of that — “it's one of the hardest things I've done.”
The utter disregard by some people for the risk that healthcare workers face and the work they're doing — “I don't know how our staff keep coming in every day,” she said.
Public health officials are monitoring more than 1,500 cases or high-risk exposures, including 18 outbreaks across the community.
“We will be on the verge of collapsing the public healthcare capacity,” medical officer of health Dr. Wajid Ahmed warned again Tuesday.
“It has been a constant struggle for both (health unit CEO) Theresa (Marentette) and myself — even on Saturday and Sunday we've been working 12 to 14 hours both days — just to stay on top of everything that's happening,” he said.
The health unit used to work five days a week. It's been working seven days a week since March. Staff are being redeployed from other programs. More staff have been hired. And additional help is coming from the province.
Monique Langlois lasted four months as a personal support worker in a long-term care home during the first wave.
Then she couldn't do it any more.
She quit in June.
“I couldn't physically do the job anymore, physically, mentally or emotionally,” she said.
She couldn't sleep. She had tendinitis “left and right.” She wasn't allowed to hug lonely residents who missed their families. She saw colleagues break down or become complacent because they were exhausted.
She had lived in a trailer in her driveway since March so she wouldn't potentially infect — or be infected by — her husband, who works in construction.
Langlois had worked in longterm care for four years before the pandemic, but “I had to step away,” she said.
Said Malus, “If everyone knew how difficult it is for the people who are sick and the people caring for them, they would never question wearing a mask.”