America Is Running Out of Nurses

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Nothing to do with the writing biz, but of interest in the middle of Covid. This is a story about traveling nurses in the US, essentially nurses who work for a limited period of time in a hospital as contract labor, usually to cover vacations or temporary staffing shortfalls.

From The New Yorker:

Gary Solesbee has an understated manner and an easy Texas drawl; he has been a nurse for twenty-seven years. Last year, he and his wife, who is also a nurse, decided to travel. It would be a chance to explore the country and to spend time with their adult children, who were scattered in different states. In December, they started an assignment in Webster, Texas. In March, they left for Walla Walla, Washington, where their son lives, and where, shortly after they arrived, coronavirus patients began to trickle in. Over the summer, when cases exploded in the Southwest, they signed on with an academic hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “When we started travel-nursing, we had no idea we’d be doing covid nursing,” Solesbee told me. “But that’s pretty much what it’s become.” Solesbee, who now works in a step-down unit—the rung between a regular medical floor and the I.C.U.—is one of several hundred travelling nurses his current hospital system, in Albuquerque, has hired to contend with the surge. Solesbee’s hospital, like many around the country, has had to refashion many floors into covid-19 units. “It’s weird to go to an orthopedics floor and see it transformed for covid care,” Solesbee said. “Then you go to gynecology, it’s half covid. Outpatient services, all covid. Everywhere—it’s covidcovidcovid.” Last month, the New Mexico health department opened another hospital nearby to house recovering coronavirus patients who had no place to go.

. . . .

“It’s disheartening that much of the public still isn’t taking this seriously,” Solesbee said. “I want to tell them, ‘Come to work with me one day. See what it’s like.’ ” Caring for coronavirus patients is exhausting, but it’s their intense isolation, not clinical complexity, that bothers Solesbee most. “That’s the worst thing,” he said. “They can’t have family or visitors come in. We’re the only contact they have, and we can’t be with them as much as usual. We’re supposed to bundle care, limit exposure, do what you need to do and get out.” Still, there are moments when compassion trumps protocol. Recently, an elderly patient’s blood-oxygen levels dipped to dangerous levels despite maximum support. After declining a ventilator, he prepared to die. A nurse sat in the room with the patient, calling each of his family members on FaceTime, one by one, so they could said their goodbyes. “Sometimes, it’s the only thing we can do for people,” Solesbee told me. “But, in some ways, it’s the most important thing.” The other night, Solesbee sat with a dying man who had no family. With no one to call, he simply held the man’s hand as the patient’s breathing grew ragged and intermittent. Finally, it stopped. Solesbee stood up. Another patient needed his help.

Link to the rest at The New Yorker