- Pretty, you know, straightforward.
Unvaccinated, COVID-positive patient
with only single-organ dysfunction.
He seems to be holding his own on --
-You know, the last two-plus years
has been a lot of different phases,
a lot of different ups and down.
- Wife came to visit.
He seems to be in good spirits. - Okay, good.
- And a lot of different challenges.
And I think where we are now is in a situation with more
COVID-positive people in the area than we've ever seen.
- I will go in and talk to him.
- And we're faced with a potential
to fracture our main strength,
and that's the people that work here.
Andrea's been taking care of you.
Yeah, you know her very well.
- We have more patients today in a hospital
that we've had at any other given point in time
during this entire almost two years
that we've been dealing with this pandemic.
So just to give you an idea, right prior to Thanksgiving,
we were averaging about seven to eight COVID patients a day.
Now we're in the upper 80s, so a 10-, 11-fold increase
in just a few short weeks.
- We're all rooting for you. - In our hospital,
70% of the patients
that are admitted for COVID-19 are unvaccinated.
An even higher percentage of those have severe illness
making it to the ICU,
and over 90% of those who die are unvaccinated.
- Had I got the shot,
maybe I wouldn't even be in here.
- Yeah. - Possibility.
But I know one thing.
I don't have it as bad as a lot of other people in here.
I do understand that. - That's right.
- But the bottom line is,
I believe that we need to get the shot.
- Yeah. - And as soon as I'm able,
trust and believe I will be the first to have it.
- Well, if you don't have to go through some bad stuff, why?
Why go through it?
- Appreciate you. - You hang in there, man.
- And of the ones who are vaccinated,
almost all of them have some type of comorbidity,
you know, or they're immunocompromised.
We've seen very few patients who are fully vaccinated
and boosted ending up in the hospital.
- So, this is, like, one of those things
where, you know, it's not catastrophic COVID.
It's COVID that sets the dominoes, you know --
-It's not COVID ARDS.
- Right. - It's the other things.
- It's the ripple effect.
Correct. - Well, it's overwhelming.
It's completely overwhelming, because I kind of feel
like in a lot of ways, we are where we were when
COVID first came -- the big influx of patients,
how we have to change how we do patient assignments.
They come a lot of times,
and they're admitted to the floor,
but when they get really sick, they have to come to ICU.
- I don't know what the sequence of events was.
He came in in bad shape. - Right.
- And only got in worse shape, unfortunately.
- I came in because I knew I had pneumonia.
I could feel it. I couldn't stop coughing.
And they took the COVID test, and they came back,
it told me I had it.
So because of my heart condition,
they've decided to keep me.
I've had both shots.
I was due to get my booster the end of this month,
so I have to wait now, at least till next month.
But I'm going to get it.
No, my body fought it off pretty good.
The vaccine really does work.
If I did not get vaccinated or I did not come here,
I might not be here to talk to you.
I might not be here.
- Last week, I had a patient, and we had to intubate him.
And as we were kind of gathering the equipment, Dr Patel says,
"We're gonna do our rounds first,
and then we're gonna come back.
I think he needs to be intubated."
I said, "Okay, fine."
So I went in, and I talked to him,
and it's scary to see all these people
come in the room with masks and goggles and all dressed up.
And he looked at me and said,
"I am trusting you to take care of me."
And, you know, it just rips your heart apart.
Unfortunately, he didn't make it.
And how does that make me feel?
I kind of felt like I failed him.
But I also --
I wanted to say if you'd only gotten the vaccine --
I wish you had gotten the vaccine.
- I know it's scary to get that call
in the middle of the night though.
- You know, the beginnings of this
were everyone inside the hospitals
fearing for their own lives in the quest to help others.
Everyone in the hospital dealt with lack of PPE,
lack of testing, healthcare narratives
rooted in political nonsense,
a new antagonistic relationship with the patients
because of belief in lies
and a lack of respect for scientific fact.
And then, you know, all that on top of the death,
right -- the volumes of death.
And you put any workforce through that
and it's not gonna be whole, right?
Antibiotics.
And we're far from whole right now.
But when you intubated him, it was clear that he aspirated,
at least, so -- -Yeah, he did.
- Just like every other industry, healthcare,
we've had the same kind of issues of the great resignation,
the great quit, whatever we're calling it these days.
And a lot of that, I would say,
is because it's hard being a healthcare worker.
You know, it's been almost two years,
and there are so many people who are dedicated
and have been dedicated to the field,
but they're just drained, tired, and trying to figure out
how to juggle everything else in their lives.
So we have seen, you know, in some departments
up to a 20-plus percent vacancy rate,
which makes it very hard to staff at the same time
that volumes are going up.
- I hate these gowns, man.
- You know, we also -- you know, we live in the community,
the same communities that we're serving.
So in the last few weeks, 50 to 60 staff
who have tested positive for COVID,
so that just puts an additional strain on our ability
to take care of the community.
- Was she ever extubated?
You know, a lot more is being shouldered by fewer people.
A lot of times, in a lot of industries
and in a lot of businesses, you know,
people can perceive people and workers to be replaceable.
Look around at these people here.
They're not replaceable.
What drives them is not something you can duplicate.
It's who they are.
Deal with chronic illness all the time, right?
It's just a matter of, you know, you add COVID on top of that,
and it sets the ball rolling to this.
So yeah. - Whoo!
- I never thought about quitting.
It serves my life's purpose.
I love helping people, and being a nurse
is sort of like being married.
You come for the good and the bad,
and COVID was definitely the bad.
But I still came to work, because why quit now?
My patients need me.
- We totally need -- -A win?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- So him getting out of here will go a long way.
- I need a win. - I know.
- So let's do it.
- The odd are against them and us,
and you're just setting yourself up
for so much disappointment, you know?
And that's what's been very, very hard.
And each time you get a glimmer of that --
you know, that hope that you can get someone through it,
everyone here is rooting for him.
So that's what we have left. - Okay.
At some point, yeah.
I mean, like, when are you hoping to do it?