CLEVELAND, Ohio — Medical professionals across the state are exhausted because staff shortages and lack of equipment are making it harder to care for patients during the current COVID-19 surge, physicians and nurses said during Gov. Mike DeWine’s Tuesday briefing.
Large academic medical centers are struggling to care for patients due to the national nursing shortage, said Dr. Suzanne Bennett at the University of Cincinnati Health.
“It creates scenarios that no one wants to think about, where we do not have the space for patients who would otherwise benefit from receiving their care at these large academic medical centers,” Bennett said.
Terri Alexander, a registered nurse at Summa Health in Akron, said she is seeing young patients who are not responding to the treatments the way they used to.
“I think everybody here is emotionally exhausted,” Alexander said. “It’s hard to come in with the staffing levels that we have, with shortages of equipment that we have, and play that balancing game that we play every day with beds and with equipment.”
Americans aren’t accustomed to being turned away at a hospital, or being unable to have a sick loved one placed in ICU, because of overcrowding, Alexander said.
Emergency plans were drawn up a year ago to ensure that there would be enough beds during a pandemic surge, such as converting convention centers and other large areas into hospital space. Ohio could put the physical part of that emergency plan into place, but the problem is lack of staffing to take care of patients in those locations, said Dr. Alan Rivera, hospitalist at the Fulton County Health Center near Toledo.
The nursing staff at the Fulton County Health Center is down 50% as nurses leave the profession, retire or find other jobs because of the emotional strain, Rivera said.
“Now we’re getting the surge this year, not because we have more COVID patients, but because we have less staffing to take care of the same amount of COVID patients,” Rivera said.
The state is seeing higher numbers of hospitalizations among those under the age of 50, DeWine said. About 97% of patients of all ages in Ohio hospitals who are there for COVID-19 are unvaccinated, he said.
Alexander said she welcomes the vaccination mandate, which goes into effect next month at Summa. Bennett said she supported vaccine mandates to help Ohio raise its vaccination rate.
“Obviously this is a hot topic, and it’s a sad state of affairs … for it to get to a point that we have to ask for government involvement to mandate something that we know is based in science and evidence, that can prevent deaths,” Bennett said.
Bennett said it remained to be seen whether an upcoming vaccine mandate deadline for Greater Cincinnati hospitals will create an exodus at a time when staffing is short.
DeWine on new vaccine incentives and more
DeWine said he is thinking about a new type of incentive to encourage Ohioans to get vaccinated. Ohio conducted a weekly Vax-a-Million lottery for Ohioans who had received at least one COVID-19 shot earlier this year. The lottery gave out weekly prizes of $1 million to adults and college scholarships to students 12-17.
“We’ve told every health department in the state, if you want to offer a monetary incentive, you can do that, we will pay for it,” DeWine said.
DeWine said he has not been involved in discussions over House Bill 248, titled the Vaccine Choice and Anti-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit employers, including health care facilities, from even requesting that workers disclose their vaccine status.
His staff is looking into ways to help school districts facing a shortage of bus drivers due to the pandemic. “I don’t know what we can do, but I’ve asked our team to see if we can come up with some ways to help,” he said.
Ad Choices