Dr. Rick Hildebrant:
There's definitely a level of exhaustion amongst staff.
I think we are better poised than other places, in that we have had relatively good staffing through most of this. The last several months have been really challenging with both nursing staff and physician staff. There is definitely a feeling of fatigue. The numbers have been high for a while. Even before we were seeing this most recent COVID surge, the amount of delayed care that has required inpatient hospitalization was very high.
And to add a COVID surge on top of that, we have seen volumes at our hospital that we have really never seen before, both in the acute care space in the medical surgical beds, but also in the ICU. And that can be really challenging when the ICU beds are completely filled in a hospital such as ours.
Unfortunately, it's not just our hospital. It's also the hospitals around us. It's our tertiary partners that are also taxed by this. And our ability to transfer patients has been limited. So it's been very hard on staff, for sure.
We have a very positive attitude in this hospital. It's an upbeat, can-do attitude, but it has been very taxing on many people.
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