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Workers weary, patients angry, as COVID fills Michigan hospitals — again - Bridge Michigan

Workers weary, patients angry, as COVID fills Michigan hospitals — again - Bridge Michigan

Workers weary, patients angry, as COVID fills Michigan hospitals — again - Bridge Michigan
Apr 09, 2021 2 mins, 53 secs

With an eye on his father’s bloodied face, Barry Jensen began punching numbers into his cell phone from the hospital emergency room.

We will be sharing accounts of the challenges doctors, nurses and other hospital personnel face as they work to treat patients and save lives.

Seats inside the Beaumont Hospital emergency room in the downriver Detroit community of Trenton were filled that day in late March.

And don’t bother trying Henry Ford’s Health Center in Brownstown or its Wyandotte hospital, the hospital staffer warned — they were just as busy.

More than 15 percent of Michigan hospital beds held COVID patients.

Other health systems made the same choice including Michigan Medicine, Henry Ford Health System’s Macomb County hospital in Clinton Township, and Mercy Health Muskegon Medical Center.

If case rates continue to climb, leaders at Beaumont Health, McLaren Health Care, Ascension Michigan and Sparrow said they will consider similar measures.

“Our public health system is overwhelmed, we cannot keep up the pace, with all of our new cases that are coming in every day,” Khaldun said.

It is a dreaded deja vu, with a few notable differences, several health care workers told Bridge Michigan and the Detroit Free Press in recent days.

Colleen Rowland said she waited for seven hours Tuesday in a packed emergency room at Beaumont Hospital, Taylor — in pain from kidney stones and a raging urinary tract infection. .

anymore,” said Rowland, 25, a respite care worker. .

She said she arrived mid-morning at the emergency room after pulling to the side of the road in sudden pain and vomiting en route to her job.

“You get used to being privileged, to not being in pain,” Rowland said.

Rowland said she wasn’t able to get a hospital room until after dinner Tuesday, then had surgery Wednesday.

Michael McKenna said the system’s hospitals are “definitely packed” both with COVID patients and others unlucky enough to require hospital care in a pandemic. .

“When we're at full capacity, … we have had to temporarily hold people, like in the emergency room, but typically we're able to get them up to the floor” as other patients are discharged and free up beds,  he said. .

Joseph Mercy and Mercy Health systems — 90 patients were in emergency rooms waiting for open beds Thursday morning, said Rosalie Tocco-Bradley, its chief clinical officer. .

For intensive-care unit nurse Kim Stasik, 38, who works at Beaumont Hospital in Trenton, Monday was “hands down” the worst night in her 15 years in the profession.

“We are tired now," Stasik said.

“We've had patients as young as 22,” Stasik said

When hospitals canceled nonemergency procedures last spring, nurses and other staffers who worked in heart labs or with orthopedic patients were redeployed to help on COVID floors

Meanwhile, younger COVID patients are more likely to wait until the last minute to come to the hospital, rather than getting in touch with their primary care physician when they first feel sick or test positive, she and others said

“Once we clear a room and get that room disinfected, the room is filled again,” Macko said

And, there are still notes, calls and texts from those they have helped, said Robin Cannon, clinical nurse manager for Memorial Healthcare’s COVID unit in Owosso, west of Flint

“To hear that feedback,” Cannon said, “to know they're recognizing what an excellent job that’s happening, and just being able to care for the patients — that's what makes weary worth it.”

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