Oso planning to go pro
Huh?
Typo. Should have said “aren’t”. There’s this narrative that the ICUs are flooded with Covid patients but if you look at the link the overwhelming amount of beds are not with covid patients (in Illinois). I’m using Illinois bc that’s one place where they actually have the breakdown to see. You can also see the amount of icu beds has dropped since the beginning of the pandemic.
That Sweden article is from April.
The issue is that we need our icu beds. They aren’t just sitting there open and waiting, people have disease that requires hospital care. So yeah covid isn’t all the beds but it is the reason we are forced to and above capacity. Also this isn’t a narrative, it’s happening in hot spots. It’s not happening in areas that aren’t hot spots for the reason you describe…they are handling it with the capacity available.
On the other hand ...An Illinois region reported Monday and Tuesday that it ran out of intensive care unit beds, a milestone that has meant delayed surgeries and, in some cases, longer waits for appropriate care.In the latest Illinois Department of Public Health count released Tuesday, the state’s southern region reported that, overnight Monday, its hospitals had no available ICU beds in an area that includes roughly 400,000 people. As of Tuesday morning, 19 hospitals in that region still had zero open ICU beds, said Arien Herrmann, regional hospital coordinating center manager for the area.https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-zero-icu-beds-covid-20210915-k672qydhsfbqfpmg52yyjpv2wy-story.htmlBut yes, unlike some southern parts of the state (and country), ICUs are not being overwhelmed in northern Illinois.I wonder why that is.
I understand but that's not the way these arguments are being framed. The general population is acting like hospitals don't normally run their ICUs at high capacity.
Got it...Let's continue to make a big deal that all 87 of the ICU beds in Region 5 of Illinois are utilized. Especially when you have no idea the breakdown...
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Is it your belief that ICU beds in southern Illinois are filling up with non-COVID patients? That'd be a pretty astounding coincidence, don't you think?
If you want to have the argument that as an area/state/country we don't have enough ICU beds, that's fine. But sounding the alarm that 87 ICU beds for a place with 400,000 people is a little much.
Wisconsin does a pretty good job of breaking down who is in the ICU right now.Currently in whole state ICU beds are 94% occupied with 75% of those not having Covid. Throw in maybe 5% of the Patients categorized as Covid positive but in the ICU for primarily other reasons that puts the ICU census around 80% of non-Covid which is around the normal avg. The additional 15% occupancy from Covid patients certainly stresses those teams a little more because of isolation/PPE protocols that need to followed but like you said these units are always jam packed which is why it’s rare to see a nurse who spends decades at the bedside in an ICU environment, high stress always!!
There are about 1,360 ICU beds in the state, and as of two days ago, are occupied by 320 Covid patients. That's 23.5%.
Right….so 75% non Covid, like I said
Now how does that affect staffing and resources?
It affects both as you would imagine, the good news is that hospitals now know what resources it takes to care for a Covid patient so it’s a little more predictable and they can plan for it.The bigger concern I’m hearing from hospital administrators is the unknown percentage of there workforce that will quit/fired once the vaccine mandates go into place and how that will affect their health systems ability to handle the inevitable fall surge. Some are estimating 1% while others are fearing as much as 10% would leave during a time where nursing shortages are being felt at all levels and corners of the country.
I don't get this argument of "most of the ICU beds are occupied by other things than COVID so people are over-reacting".A single illness never takes up over 20% of ICU beds. That is unheard of and is a massive deal leading to people dying because they can't get a bed. If over 20% of ICU beds were due to food poisoning, or a chickenpox outbreak...it would be national catastrophic news, and the entire nation would be undergoing special protocols to stem the tide.I don't get the mindset of the people that push this narrative. It is a huge deal and is being reported as such. We need to do everything we can to mitigate further spread and stress on the system.
The bigger concern I’m hearing ...
This sounds like the previous president, who loved to say, "I'm hearing" or "people say" or "people tell me" when he was making stuff up.But I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not just making this up and that you have a pipeline to numerous hospital administrators who have voiced this concern to you ... Don't you think patients and their families should have the expectation that when they step into a hospital, the nurses, doctors and support staff have been vaccinated for a highly contagious virus that already has killed 650K Americans? Wouldn't you and your loved ones have that expectation every time you step into a hospital?What is your solution other than terminating selfish, irrational employees who refuse to get vaccinated? Restrict unvaccinated staff to areas where they can never come face-to-face with patients or vaccinated co-workers? Establish separate COVID-19 wards for unvaccinated patients staffed strictly by unvaccinated medical personnel?I'll tell you what the largest hospital network in the southeast is doing because their CEO sent an email to all employees a couple weeks ago explaining it:They're going to fire every employee who isn't vaccinated by Oct. 31 - period. Meanwhile, they've been hiring hundreds of recent grads to be RNs and nursing aides, stipulating that those employees must be vaccinated to get hired. And they have increased the pay for current and incoming staff. So yes, they will be trading experienced nurses who are willing to get infected with a deadly virus for inexperienced nurses who are willing to follow life-saving rules. If I or a loved one had to go to that hospital, it sounds like a reasonable trade-off to me.
I don't get this argument of "most of the ICU beds are occupied by other things than COVID so people are over-reacting".