O. C. respiratory therapists ‘ running on empty’
Fountain Valley Regional Hospital & Medical Center respiratory therapists — whose skills and training place them squarely at the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic — are describing increasingly untenable work conditions as the facility struggles against its capacity to admit and treat COVID- 19 patients.
Concerned about urgent safety issues that they say have so far gone unaddressed as the patient count continues to rise, employees reached out to representatives from the National Union of Healthcare Workers to intervene on their behalf.
“We had a call with therapists over the weekend, who said we need to sound the alarm,” said Barbara Lewis, NUHW’s Southern California hospital division director. “Our members see how bad it is right now. There
needs to be a breakthrough because this is not sustainable.”
In a Dec. 20 email to Chief Executive Kenneth McFarland and other hospital officials, Lewis asked for a meeting to discuss “a very bad situation regarding patient safety.” When they received no response, they sent a fol
low- up message and received an immediate reply from Human Resources Officer Mark Fisher.
“There is a lot going on and I am please asking you to be patient,” Fisher wrote, explaining leaders were too busy working in patient care to address the issues. “Please outline your concerns in writing and then I will work with the leaders who can address.”
Several of the 70 or so therapists employed by the hospital, however, say working conditions are far too dire to explain in a list and seek to remedy the situation.
Five employees speaking in an interview Tuesday said that 169 COVID- 19 patients were being treated at the Fountain Valley facility, compared with 73 during the summertime peak. The recent surge in the number of ventilated patients, coupled with staff shortages, has been pushing respiratory therapists to their breaking point, they say.
Therapists typically work 12- hour shifts in which they are assigned a series of duties that each have a point value that tends to top out at 30 points, said Fountain Valley employee Michael Kingston. Ventilated patients, for example, may account for six to 10 points, depending on their medical need.
But in the current surge, one employee could be assigned 100 points’ worth of duties in a day. Meanwhile, it’s not uncommon for a 12hour shift to stretch by another four, six or eight hours.
Annie Do, who has worked at the hospital for two years, said patients now are sicker than everwith respiratory symptoms from COVID- 19. It’s not uncommon for therapists to have to drop what they’re doing to respond to a “code blue” call, indicating a patient with cardiac or respiratory arrest, several times each shift. A coding patient can pull a therapist from regular f loor duties for more than two hours.
“We are running on skeleton crews, and our skeleton crews are already running on empty. We are working extremely hard, without breaks and without lunch, and we are still unable to care for these patients,” Do said. “At this point, we are in a crisis situation. Our licenses are on the line. These patients’ lives are on the line. And they are dying — that’s a fact.”
Officials with Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Tenet Healthcare, which operates the facility, did not speak in an interview or respond directly to employee claims. Tenet spokeswoman Jennifer Bayer acknowledged in an email that the demand to care for COVID- 19 patients was “putting a strain on our hospital staff.”
“We take the concerns of our employees seriously and are currently reviewing the issues recently brought to our attention from the union representing our respiratory therapists,” she said. “Fountain Valley has the capacity to treat patients presenting at our hospital, and we can safely care for our patients with the supplies that we currently have.”