Yeah, hospitals and emergency rooms are SOOOO inundated with dying COVID patients, yet these people always seem to find time to script, choreograph, rehearse, and record some stupid dance video. Yet every video I've seen of Emergency Rooms in hospitals look like ghost towns.
And do we know if these people are really nurses? I don't think it would be too hard to dress the part for a dance video.
I'm an ER Doc in CA. Last week, business as usual. This week, our ER is getting crushed. We're short 7 or 8 nurses each shift, so while there may be enough physical beds, we don't have the staff to put patients in those beds. ICU is full, so when an ICU level patient comes in, they board in the ER for hours. When I come in the next day, there's often still patients I admitted last shift still in the ER waiting for an ICU bed.
Nurses can have a ratio of 1 nurse to 4 patients. But ICU patients have multiple drips needing to be adjusted frequently and close, frequent monitoring for changes in patient condition, so the ratio is 1:2. Since we're so short on staff already and the ICU is backing up into the ER, our staff is stretched so thin that it is unsafe for the patients.
Our nurses are performing admirably, no one is making tik tok videos, and no one is dicking around. I'm jealous of the hospitals that are empty, but know that many in CA are legitimately getting crushed. People coming in for medication refills have to wait sometimes an hour for me to see them (and I do feel very bad about that), because there's so many legitimately sick people in the ER.
A lot of the reason CA specifically is doing poorly, I think, has to do with the high number of illegals, who are poor, and who consequently live multiple families to a house, which spreads viruses quickly among family members. They also have poor health overall because many are uninsured and don't see a primary doctor. It's not the young ones that get sick--it's the old people with multiple chronic illnesses (and there are A LOT), like COPD, or uncontrolled diabetes that get tipped into DKA that get very sick.
I'll agree with you that these videos are stupid, and bad optics, and shouldn't be made. But maybe the ones saying they're getting crushed aren't the ones making videos?
Yeah, hospitals and emergency rooms are SOOOO inundated with dying COVID patients, yet these people always seem to find time to script, choreograph, rehearse, and record some stupid dance video. Yet every video I've seen of Emergency Rooms in hospitals look like ghost towns. And do we know if these people are really nurses? I don't think it would be too hard to dress the part for a dance video.
I'm an ER Doc in CA. Last week, business as usual. This week, our ER is getting crushed. We're short 7 or 8 nurses each shift, so while there may be enough physical beds, we don't have the staff to put patients in those beds. ICU is full, so when an ICU level patient comes in, they board in the ER for hours. When I come in the next day, there's often still patients I admitted last shift still in the ER waiting for an ICU bed.
Nurses can have a ratio of 1 nurse to 4 patients. But ICU patients have multiple drips needing to be adjusted frequently and close, frequent monitoring for changes in patient condition, so the ratio is 1:2. Since we're so short on staff already and the ICU is backing up into the ER, our staff is stretched so thin that it is unsafe for the patients.
Our nurses are performing admirably, no one is making tik tok videos, and no one is dicking around. I'm jealous of the hospitals that are empty, but know that many in CA are legitimately getting crushed. People coming in for medication refills have to wait sometimes an hour for me to see them (and I do feel very bad about that), because there's so many legitimately sick people in the ER.
A lot of the reason CA specifically is doing poorly, I think, has to do with the high number of illegals, who are poor, and who consequently live multiple families to a house, which spreads viruses quickly among family members. They also have poor health overall because many are uninsured and don't see a primary doctor. It's not the young ones that get sick--it's the old people with multiple chronic illnesses (and there are A LOT), like COPD, or uncontrolled diabetes that get tipped into DKA that get very sick.
I'll agree with you that these videos are stupid, and bad optics, and shouldn't be made. But maybe the ones saying they're getting crushed aren't the ones making videos?
God bless you all!