Dr. Jaime Moreno, head of emergency medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, was making the rounds Tuesday when he tried to take a quick mid-afternoon break.
“I haven’t had the chance to sit down yet today,” he said, microwaving a container of beef and vegetables brought from home. “I don’t get a lunch, so I’m going to take my lunch right now.”
Within minutes. a voice came over the hospital’s public address system: “Code Yellow, Code Yellow, trauma in the emergency room.” A teenager, gunshot wound to the hip. Lunchtime over, Moreno jumped up and hurried to help.
At the three-year anniversary of the coronavirus shutting down Illinois, the pandemic has ebbed, but Chicago area hospitals are struggling to cope with the vastly altered health care world the plague left behind. “COVID has changed many things,” said Moreno. “We’re still reeling from it.”
While the public might be trying to forget COVID, that is not a luxury the medical community can indulge in.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike, who headed up the state COVID response as director of the Illinois Department of Public Health for two years, said while we’re familiar with mass casualty events overwhelming a single hospital or city, COVID is a nationwide mass casualty event — more than a million dead. ”It was an incredible strain on the system,” she said. “No one living has seen an overwhelming of all hospitals in the entire country at the same time, for a prolonged period of time, literally months at a stretch for each surge. This was unprecedented, and not something any system could fully plan for, prepare for, or endure.”
“The landscape has changed so completely,” said Kristin Ramsey, senior vice president quality/chief nurse executive at Northwestern Medicine. “Health care providers in all fields are walking away.”
‘Unprecedented’ staff shortage driven by burnout
Exodus of staff is the No. 1 problem cited by hospital administrators in Chicago and nationwide.
“A lot of burnout,” said Moreno. Mount Sinai, almost always 10% understaffed, is even lower on “bad days,” with 30%, even 40% fewer personnel on hand than necessary.
“Unprecedented,” he said. “People are stressed out. A lot of nurses have stepped away, leaving a lot of holes. Not just in my hospital but hospitals around the country.”
“I haven’t had the chance to sit down yet today,” he said, microwaving a container of beef and vegetables brought from home. “I don’t get a lunch, so I’m going to take my lunch right now.”
Within minutes. a voice came over the hospital’s public address system: “Code Yellow, Code Yellow, trauma in the emergency room.” A teenager, gunshot wound to the hip. Lunchtime over, Moreno jumped up and hurried to help.
At the three-year anniversary of the coronavirus shutting down Illinois, the pandemic has ebbed, but Chicago area hospitals are struggling to cope with the vastly altered health care world the plague left behind. “COVID has changed many things,” said Moreno. “We’re still reeling from it.”
While the public might be trying to forget COVID, that is not a luxury the medical community can indulge in.
Dr. Ngozi Ezike, who headed up the state COVID response as director of the Illinois Department of Public Health for two years, said while we’re familiar with mass casualty events overwhelming a single hospital or city, COVID is a nationwide mass casualty event — more than a million dead. ”It was an incredible strain on the system,” she said. “No one living has seen an overwhelming of all hospitals in the entire country at the same time, for a prolonged period of time, literally months at a stretch for each surge. This was unprecedented, and not something any system could fully plan for, prepare for, or endure.”
“The landscape has changed so completely,” said Kristin Ramsey, senior vice president quality/chief nurse executive at Northwestern Medicine. “Health care providers in all fields are walking away.”
‘Unprecedented’ staff shortage driven by burnout
Exodus of staff is the No. 1 problem cited by hospital administrators in Chicago and nationwide.
“A lot of burnout,” said Moreno. Mount Sinai, almost always 10% understaffed, is even lower on “bad days,” with 30%, even 40% fewer personnel on hand than necessary.
“Unprecedented,” he said. “People are stressed out. A lot of nurses have stepped away, leaving a lot of holes. Not just in my hospital but hospitals around the country.”
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