San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
ANOTHER CHRISTMAS OF DEATH AND DISTRESS IN AMERICA’S ICUS
Of all the COVID patients that Ronda Stevenson is treating over Christmas, there’s one she cannot stop thinking about. He has been hospitalized for 10 months, and in all that time, his 7-year-old daughter has never once been allowed to visit, prohibited from the hospital by age restrictions that keep families separated. Situations such as this are bringing even veteran health care workers to tears.
Stevenson, an intensive care unit nurse at Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis for the past seven years, cries as she talks about her patients and their families, making clear the grinding toll of the pandemic on already exhausted hospital workforces.
“We’re pretty shortstaffed,” Stevenson said, adding, “It’s getting harder.”
Instead of taking holiday vacations this weekend, workers at strained hospitals across the nation are working 16-hour shifts.
Some have been on the job every day for weeks. Festive meals have been replaced with protein bars and sports drinks.
This Christmas weekend, with the United States facing another surge of illness stoked by a proportion of the population that remains unvaccinated, frontline workers are again sacrificing time at home with family to tend to COVID patients. In Indiana, which has among the highest rates of hospitalization and lowest rates of vaccination in the country, the situation is especially acute.
“A lot of people, including myself, had scheduled time off but are now being asked to come in and pick up shifts to cover for one another and meet the increased demands of patient care,” said Dr. Graham Carlos, executive medical director at Eskenazi, which is at capacity and has had a backlog of patients in the emergency room.
Nearly two years into a pandemic that shows no sign of abating, doctors, nurses and other front-line workers have already faced the emotional toll of mass death in their hospitals. They have endured the frustration of pleading with the public to take precautions only to watch outbreaks unfold as people ignored the call for help. They have suffered the moral distress of not being able to give patients the ideal level of care.
But this season, there is a new strain on the system: Many workers who persisted through the first year of the pandemic have departed jobs because of burnout and anxiety. And with the Omicron variant pushing case numbers up dramatically, the caregivers who remain are getting infections, too, straining staff levels in unpredictable ways.
Facing urgent concerns about hospital staffing shortages, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this past week shortened the isolation periods for infected health care workers, allowing them to return to the job in seven days, instead of 10.