People with serious illnesses requiring urgent intervention are forced to queue to go to a hospital crowded with infected COVID-19.
Dr. Bradley Dreyfus from Tucson, Arizona said this in a publication for The New York Times.
According to him, when officials in May began to quarantine, doctors were skeptical, and they were right. Now in the USA, a new wave of epidemic begins, and the number of infected is constantly growing. Dreyfus noted that only Arizona daily breaks records in the number of new patients, many patients are quickly recovering, others are hospitalized. At this stage, an important problem arises – there are not enough beds in hospitals.
“Many hospitalized patients remain in the emergency room, awaiting transfer to hospital wards, because the hospital no longer has intensive care beds or there are not enough staff to care for them,” the doctor explains. – Because of this, there are much fewer emergency rooms available for people with non-Covid-19 and urgent problems. Therefore, sick people wait until the emergency room bed becomes available. ”
He emphasizes that at the moment there is no hint of reducing the influx of patients, but the hospital staff is physically and morally exhausted. In this regard, Dreyfus recalled that many hospitals had previously carried out staff reductions due to lack of funding. Doctors are still working, but they can’t do much without the help of nurses, paramedics, emergency and intensive care specialists, radiologists or social workers.
“Lack of staff and growing fatigue are the new norm for emergency rooms, intensive care units and COVID-19 units, as well as for hospital units. Staffing is established with an emphasis on “productivity”, which is determined by financial calculations, and not by the clinical severity or complex needs of our patients and the community we serve, ” stated Dreyfus.