re: Hospital overload in Louisiana is it COVID or is it pent up elective surgery demand?

Is that cheaper than paying contract travel nurses?

What about military nurses? All the whining in world ain't going to solve the problem. Sounds like there is not much of a willingness to address this from our leaders.

I'm directing this at you Oilfieldbiology. I'm asking everyone.

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I asked this in another thread, what would it take (how much training) to transform the nurses that aren’t being taxed right now, namely surgical nurses, to increase the capacity in ICU’s? I’m not saying make them ICU nurses but allow them to assist ICU nurses as a force multiplier?

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This is already happening. I’ve been told that the main issue is diminishing returns.

Let’s say you have 10 ICU nurses who typically manage 2 patients each. That’s 20 patients with 10 nurses (2:1 ratio). Now you bring in 3 PACU nurses to supplement. Let’s say you pick the good ones and they manage 2 patients each, but collectively require 1 ICU nurse to help them. Now you can manage 24 patents with 13 nurses (1.85:1 ratio).

Next you bring in another 5 meg-surg nurses to supplement. Maybe they can each handle 1 patient and collectively require 1 ICU nurse to help them. Now you can manage 27 patients with 18 nurses (1.5:1 ratio).

The numbers are made up but the effect is real. I’m sure there are also some liability concerns as well, which is probably why the hospitals would prefer to either add ICU nurses or get existing employees to work extra shifts. But both of those options require the hospital to pay more money.

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What about military nurses? All the whining in world ain't going to solve the problem. Sounds like there is not much of a willingness to address this from our leaders.

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Military strike team deploying to Baton Rouge General amid another coronavirus patient surge

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Baton Rouge General spokeswoman Katie Johnston said Friday that the 33-person team would spend time assessing the hospital's staffing needs and relieving overworked staff who have been overwhelmed with high coronavirus case numbers.

The team of nurses will be on site until the end of August, though their scope won't be determined until they go through orientation and assess the hospital's needs this weekend, according to Baton Rouge General Chief Operating Officer Trisha Guidry.

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Wasn't part of the "lockdown" to allow them to prepare?

WTF were they doing?

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There is so much ignorance here that I'm not even sure where to begin.

The lockdown was to try to accommodate the initial surge. My hospital was beyond capacity in March/April. We converted an entire floor (brought in negative air pressure machines, cut holes in windows to vent the machines, etc). We also had to convert another dozen beds to ICU level care. (added cameras and telemetry to standard rooms... 1 on 1 care, etc.).

We also dedicated 2 OR's for known CoVid patients requiring surgery, or someone needing emergency surgery whose CoVid status was unknown.

We had to shift personnel resources to areas which they may not have previously worked.

The demand on heightened PPE requirements and usage strained supply chains as well.

Things cooled down in June, but now we have more CoVid patients than during the first wave. The strain on our ICU capacity is less, but this CoVid surge has more positive patients in the hospital than the first surge... to the point, we had to convert a second floor to a negative pressure CoVid unit. Besides that, testing is such that we have to place many patients in 'results pending' unit, because we may not know for several days if they are positive. We have a limited supply of 'same-day' rapid read tests.

This is the same story throughout the hospital region which our hospital is in. This is in Louisiana.

Finally, we have had more employees out who have contracted the virus, and they are not allowed back at work for 14 days. This has also been a huge strain. Our ER has had many pateints 'holding' (stuck in the ER because there are no beds/nurses on the floor to accommodate them), for the last 2 weeks.

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The reality is we aren’t paying the medical staff enough to be dealing with this. There wouldn’t be a shortage of workers if you increase their pay a good bit during this.

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OK let's look at OLOL as an example, it may be par for the course or it may be an exception.

Base pay for RNs is ~$25-30 an hour for their standard 3 12s. They are getting $20 extra per hour for working COVID units. They are also giving a bonus of $250, $300 and $350 for the 4th, 5th, and 6th shift picked up. So a ICU nurse can get over $1,100 for the 6th shift worked in a week.

At least at OLOL the problem isn't pay it is nurses qualified for working a COVID ICU. There is a percentage of med-surg nurses that are sharp enough to quickly develop ICU skills but not most of them.

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no open ICU beds in Shreveport

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I can tell you first hand and with 100% certainty that this statement is untrue.

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My wife is on like day 5 of 120 of a travel ICU nurse assignment. Crazy money but working 6 straight 12 hr night shifts.

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