SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Nerissa Black has already found it difficult to care for four COVID-19 patients who require constant heart monitoring. But due to staff shortages affecting hospitals in California, her workload has recently increased to six people infected with the coronavirus.
Black, a registered nurse at the telemetry unit of Henry Mayo Hospital in Valencia, just north of Los Angeles, barely had time to take a breather or eat a meal. But what really worries her is not enough time to spend with each of her patients.
Black said she rarely has time to help patients brush their teeth or go to the bathroom because she has to prioritize making sure they get the medicine they need and that they do not develop airways.
“We had more patients (in December) compared to last year because we did not have enough staff to look after everyone,” Black said.
Overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients in the country with the largest population, Black and many other nurses who are now thin care for more patients than is usually allowed under state law after the state began issuing exemptions allowing hospitals to temporarily ‘ a strict nurse can bypass. Patient Relations Law – a step they say pushes them to the brink of burnout and affects patient care.
California is the only state in the country that by law requires a specific number of nurses to have patients in each hospital unit. This requires hospitals to provide one nurse for every two patients in intensive care and one nurse for every four patients in, for example, emergencies. The relationships say the relationships have helped reduce mistakes and protect the safety of patients and nurses.
Nurses overwhelmed by patients due to pandemic in other states, demand legal relationships. But so far they could not get it. In Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York, the country’s first hotspot for pandemics, nurses have been demanding state orders for minimum staff for months. Voters in Massachusetts rejected nurse-to-patient commitments in 2018.
In the ten minutes that Black comes with each person every hour, she has to look at laboratory work reports, do image reports, communicate any abnormalities to the doctor, document her interventions, coordinate with the case workers, and in many cases arrange the chaplain of the hospital. , she said.
‘It’s very busy, the nurses and not only the nurses but also the assistants, we are all exhausted. Morale is quite low, ”she said.
Government Department of Public Health Gavin Newsom began issuing a temporary waiver of the law for the second time in December after another surge left hospitals in Southern California and agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley with intensive care due to a lack of staff. The department ordered all non-urgent and elective surgeries and last year issued a 90-day coverage of the patient relationship.
To date, at least 250 of the approximately 400 hospitals in California have been granted 60-day waivers allowing ICU nurses to care for three people and emergency nurses to supervise six patients. The waiver only applies to intensive care units, observation units, cardiac monitoring, emergency and surgical care. But Newsom has so far not canceled menus during the recent boom.
The spokesman, Marc Brown, applied to Kaiser Permanente, which has 36 hospitals in California, at 15 of them for pardon to plan. He said the healthcare giant has avoided asking for more waivers by canceling electives and non-urgent surgeries, paying nurses overtime and working with the nurses to move their shifts and places.
“We take the existing relationships seriously,” Brown said.
Jan Emerson-Shea, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association, said hospitals only apply for a waiver after they have no other choice but to care for the patients they have.
“We are literally in the worst crisis of this pandemic so far and are seeing consequences we have not seen yet,” Emerson-Shea said, adding that hospitals are only trying to get through the crisis. “Nobody wants our staff to be emotionally and physically exhausted. But we have no choice. People need care. ”
Hospitals in California typically turn to staffing agencies and travel nurses during the winter season, when hospitals are hospitalized and medical staff become ill due to the flu. But California is now one of the states nationwide fighting for medical staff, especially trained nurses for ICUs.
Stephanie Roberson, director of government relations at the California Nurses Association, criticized hospitals for failing to prepare better by training registered nurses and for not employing more staff – including travel nurses – in COVID-19 cases, despite the expected increase in hospitalizations.
“In some of our hospital systems, if they were lucky to have travelers, they chased the travelers away because they told the travelers that they were not in a crisis mode, and the travelers went elsewhere because they had better performances elsewhere. had, “Roberson said.
Black, who has been a nurse for ten years, said she trusts her husband to take care of her family needs so she can rest and sleep as much as possible on her free days. She also visited a therapist to deal with the stress of the work.
She said she does everything she can to look after herself because she is committed to helping her patients. But she calls her working conditions increasingly unsafe.
‘A lot of people say we signed up for this and no, we did not. I entered to help care for people and not to throw myself into the fire, ”said Black.
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Associated Press author Don Thompson in Sacramento contributed to this story.