Category Archives: Nurses

What seven ICU nurses want you to know about the battle against covid-19

Posted on by • Posted in Asymptomatic Transmission, Coronavirus, Coronavirus Treatment, Crisis, Crisis Management, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Bed Shortage, Hospital Capacity, Hospital Industry, Intensive Care (ICU), Mortality, Nurses, Out of Control, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Scientists, Social Distancing • Leave a comment
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What seven ICU nurses want Americans to know about COVID - Washington Post

They have been at this for almost a year. While politicians argued about masks, superspreader weddings made the news, a presidential election came and went, and at least 281,000 Americans died, nurses reported for work. The Post asked seven ICU nurses what it’s been like to care for the sickest covid patients. This is what they want you to know.

As of Dec. 7, Idaho has seen 110,510 total confirmed cases, 1,035 deaths, and 477 people are currently hospitalized with the virus.

Kori Albi, 31

Covid unit intensive care nurse and unit supervisor, Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center

Our staff are getting sick. Our physicians are getting sick. And they’re not getting it from the hospital. They’re getting it from the community. We are almost lucky to care for the covid patients because we know who they are. Anytime we go into these rooms, we know exactly what we need to do. We have all the PPE we need. And as long as we are diligent and follow all the processes that are in place, we can keep ourselves safe. That’s not what worries me at all. Going out into the community is scarier than coming into work every day. Because you don’t know who has it.

This virus has caused this feeling, this sense of isolation. The covid unit is an isolated desert. Every door is shut. Every room has negative airflow. By the time you put your N95 mask on and then your surgical mask over the top of that, then you put your isolation gown on and your face shield on top of that, you can’t tell who is who. So much of health care is about that personal touch — now, our patients can’t even see our name badges because they are on under our gowns. All they see are our eyes through our face mask.

A lot of families are hesitant to have Zoom calls with patients because it can be uncomfortable and awkward. Especially if these patients are sedated and intubated. There’s always that awkwardness of: Can they hear you? Can they not hear you? Even as nurses, we feel like we’re talking to the wall. But we talk to them just as if they were awake. Allowing families to play their music that they like or pray with them or just talk to them can absolutely help. You see vital signs change.

One patient, all she wanted to do was have her son sing her a song. I think I spent over an hour in the room listening to him play the guitar and sing her a song. He sang her mostly hymns.

Death is a very intimate event that normally involves a lot of family members that help bring closure and that helps everyone process. In normal circumstances, health care providers form these relationships with the family at the bedside. All of that has been removed. And we now have to try to form those relationships over the telephone. It’s a traumatic experience. And it’s a long drawn-out process. A lot of people don’t make it out of here. It’s a slow, lonely death.

The amount of death with covid is profound. As nurses, we have learned to process death, but the amount of death has happened in such a short span of time — that’s what’s been overwhelming. I had a patient that we did a Zoom call with. His four-year-old granddaughter lived with him. And she brought tears to the room. The naivete of a four-year-old. Her grandfather was intubated so he couldn’t talk. But he could kind of look around the room. But the innocence of her, saying, “Come home, Pa. I miss you, Pa. I love you Pa,” all through a video screen. The 14-year-old that also lived with them couldn’t formulate words to say anything, and he didn’t know what to do or say in that video. But the four-year-old was telling Pa to come home.

JACKSON, MISS.

As of Dec. 7, Mississippi has seen 166,194 total confirmed cases, 3,961 deaths, and 1,157 people are currently hospitalized with the virus.

Catie Carrigan, 28

ICU, University of Mississippi Medical Center

There are some patients who have been in their younger 20s and their younger 30s, and I think maybe those are the hardest cases. They have families and they have kids just like I do, and it’s hard coming into work and taking care of them. Knowing they’re supposed to be going to college, they’re supposed to be getting married, they’re supposed to be having kids and, instead, they’re laying in a hospital bed on a ventilator fighting for their life.

They have their whole entire lives ahead of them, and then they get hit with this disease that everybody thinks is a hoax and then they die.

I worked in the ER a month ago, so I know exactly what’s going on down there, and now I work in the ICU, so I know exactly what’s going on on both sides of it. There are no ICU beds in the hospital. None. When there are no ICU beds, we hold them in the ER, or we hold them in the PACU (post-anesthesia care unit). The ER still has to treat our trauma patients, our car accidents, our gunshot victims. So when we have those ICU holds in the ER, it obviously makes the jobs of nurses and doctors in the ER way more difficult than it needs to be. We are treating patients in the hallway. They’re just trying to do the best they can with the resources that we have.

There is no room left, essentially, and I think that’s really what people don’t seem to understand. And I get it, when you’re not in health care you don’t really see our side of it, but we’re seeing the worst of it. It’s hard for us to convey that to the public because they don’t seem to want to take our word for it — but take our word for it. Take our word for it.

IOWA CITY

As of Dec. 7, Iowa has seen 244,844 total confirmed cases, 2,717 deaths, and 898 people are currently hospitalized with the virus.

Allison Wynes, 39

Medical intensive care unit, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics

I cry every day when I walk in to work, and I cry every day when I walk to my car after work.

You get it out of your system before you show up and you do your job and you’re fine. Then, you go home and you cry before you get home. And then you go home and be mom.

My 9-year-old daughter asks frequently, “Mommy, how many patients were there today? Mommy, how many sick ones were there today? Were you safe? Was everything okay? Do you have to go to work again? How many patients?” She gets it.

I think one thing that people do not appreciate is it’s not only the number or volume of patients that comes through — it’s the level of care that they require, which is so much greater than a standard patient in the ICU or a standard patient in the floor, because they can get very, very sick very quickly.

We were walking a patient who was on ECMO, which is extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and it took five people to walk her. That’s not normal.

I work in the MICU, so it’s never like a party up in here, but it used to at least be, nine times out of ten, calm and controlled and tidy and clean. Occasionally stuff would go bad and we would all run and help, and then we would all go about our days. Now it just feels like, especially of late, there is equipment everywhere. There are gowns everywhere. There are gloves everywhere, there are people everywhere, and there are fires everywhere.

I’m actually scared, and I’ve never been scared at work before. I am scared that we will lose control.

It’s the human resources we are running low on. We can make a bed, we can find a ventilator, we have PPE. But it’s the human cost of caring for these patients that has been keeping me up at night the past couple of weeks and really making me nauseous every day.

I didn’t think it would be over by now, but I didn’t think we’d be getting hit this hard this late. I thought we’d still just be smoldering. I didn’t know that we would just be a raging fire at this point in time. We’re not prepared for that, but here we are.

After this, I’m going to take my kids to a beach or somewhere.

GLENVIEW, ILL.

As of Dec. 7, Illinois has seen 796,264 total confirmed cases, 14,216 deaths, and 5,190 people are currently hospitalized with the virus.

Luisa Alog Penepacker, 51

ICU, Glenbrook Hospital

I’ve taken care of a lot of husband-wife patients, unfortunately. One of the cases was one in which the husband had tested positive for covid first, but he was a mild case. She was a little bit more serious. She ended up on our unit.

The husband ended up in the hospital the next day, but he was on the step-down unit. When I admitted her, she was terrified, especially knowing that her husband was upstairs in another unit. She was having a hard time breathing, and she grabbed onto my hand and looked at me. She goes, “Am I gonna die?” I mean, I didn’t know what to say. And I just told her, “Not on my watch.” So we just kept on going. But unfortunately, she got intubated the next day.

Then I was sent to work upstairs on the step-down unit. I had her husband that next day, and he was actually quite happy that I saw her. He goes, “You took care of my wife, how is she? I heard that she’s not doing well.” I didn’t know what to say to him, either. I just said, “You know, she’s in the best of care. We’ll take really good care of her.” And he looked really relieved. He goes, “I’m just so glad that someone who had seen her is here now to talk to me.” And my heart broke with that.

She ended up passing. A few days after, he went home, and I didn’t see him, so I don’t know how he took it. He wasn’t able to see her before she passed.

We wear personal air purification respirators on our heads — these big white domes over our heads with a respirator hose going to a machine strapped around our waist, and we look like astronauts walking through the unit, going in and out of patients’ rooms with our plastic gowns and gloves.

It can be frightening to family members if they’re allowed to come to visit and definitely for patients because we’re kind of scary-looking. It can be frantic at times. You walk through the hall, and you see a lot of patients on ventilators. You hear a lot of beeping. People are rounding constantly to check on patients. It’s a busy place.

You don’t know what to tell family members when you see them. What can you say? You just say, “I’m sorry.” You can’t even hug them. I used to be able to hug family members, but you can’t with all the gear.

When patients are scared, I will hold their hand even though I’m wearing gloves. I look them in the eyes as much as I can because really, that’s all you can see. You can’t see our faces. You can barely even hear past the mask. So I’ll make sure to look at them. I try to make an effort to smile with my eyes and to just hold their hand if they need it.

MURRAY, UTAH

As of Dec. 7, Utah has seen 215,407 total confirmed cases and 939 deaths.

Tammy Kocherhans, 41

Respiratory ICU, Intermountain Healthcare

These patients are different than the typical patient. They’re very complex. They can change in the blink of an eye. And it’s very hard as a nurse when you wrap your heart and soul into taking care of these patients. I started noticing that I was emotionally tired. I was physically completely exhausted. And I was beginning to question whether or not I could continue forward being a nurse at all. I was past my physical capacity.

I happened to be working a day where another health care worker who was a veteran said that this was like a combat zone, and for some reason in my head, that validated the way that I was feeling. So I reached out to one of my best friends who is a veteran, a flight medic, and he said, “I meditate and do yoga.”

Once I started doing that, I was able to handle the emotional crises, the physical pain of working so, so many long, hard hours. We do something called proning, where you take patients and flip them over onto their bellies. And that sounds really easy, but it takes a team of a minimum of five people. It is extremely taxing on your body. It hurts. And I lift weights! The meditation and yoga really has saved my life, my mental capacity, my spiritual capacity, my physical capacity, everything that is required to give to these patients.

Hopefully by 8 p.m., I’m out in the parking lot and spend a minute in my car to unload from my day. It’s all about taking a moment to breathe for myself and then going through whatever came up that day that I need to let go of. It depends on how complicated my patient was that day, whether I can let my whole day go or if I have to spend time to go through each piece and work it down to: What did I do right? Did I miss something? Sometimes I just can’t let some details go quickly, and I have to work them down to allow myself to say I did everything that I possibly could for this individual this day, in this time, in this situation. And whatever the outcome was or is, I followed protocol. I did everything that I knew how to do. And it’s going to be OK.

I find it very frustrating when I go out and about on my days off and I see people very blatantly not wearing masks or trying to tell me how come they don’t work or telling me that this pandemic isn’t real. I find it completely disrespectful to the work we do to save people’s lives, to have people think that this pandemic isn’t real, to show utter disregard for people around them, not trying to do their part.

And I really wish that I could take people on a day with me so that they can see what I see. So that they can feel your feet ache so bad that you wish they’d just fall off, because you’re on that concrete for so many hours. Your back aches because you’re wearing equipment to save your life — so that you can save somebody else’s life. And your head hurts. I’ve never had so many headaches in my life because part of the equipment sits on your head, and after 12 hours, it starts to exert so much pressure that you start to have a headache, and you’re dehydrated.

Early in the pandemic, I remember walking into this room, and this young patient was crying and asked me if they were going to die. And I’m a mom of teenagers. For me, that was awful because this patient was all alone, and we as staff were minimizing contact because we didn’t want to get the virus.

This patient started physically trembling in the bed. I couldn’t take it anymore, and I went over and just held this patient because that’s what I’d want somebody to do for my children. That was my first patient that I held like that. And there have been many since.

MURRAY, UTAH

As of Dec. 7, Utah has seen 215,407 total confirmed cases and 939 deaths.

Nate Smithson, 28

Respiratory ICU, IntermountainHealthcare

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were on a date at a restaurant. And in the middle of nowhere, I had this panic attack and went and hid in the bathroom stall for half an hour. I have no idea what brought it on. I just couldn’t handle being there right then, which was weird for me. That’s the first time anything like that has happened. But since then, it’s happened multiple times, where the anxiety and stress is overwhelming, and I can’t handle it. So I have to go and excuse myself for a little bit.

Balancing work and life is something that used to seem possible. Now it doesn’t seem like there is any difference between the two. I fall asleep and I dream about my patients.

When we got our first covid patient in February in the hospital, in the ICU, we all kind of thought it was a little bit of a joke, to be honest. I had this patient, and he was sitting there with minimal amounts of oxygen in the room just watching TV. He’s like, “I’m fine. I don’t know why everyone’s freaking out about this.” And I thought the same thing. And then a few hours later, he stands to go pee, and I’m looking at his monitor. And it drops down to the low 90s. Ninety-two is about as low as you want to go. And then it starts dropping down lower, to about the 70s. Then it gets down into the 60s and 50s. And that’s dangerous territory. That’s where brain cells start dying and you start having some serious problems.

I run into the room. We get him back into bed and throw all the oxygen that we have in the room on him, crank everything up, and he’s not recovering from it. We had to intubate right then and there. And about an hour later, he finally starts recovering a little bit. But at this point, he’s sedated, he’s on the ventilator. Everything is worse. And that’s the first time where it’s like: Oh, crap, this is serious. This is something else. I’ve never seen anything like that before.

If a patient’s heart stops or if they stop breathing, we call a code blue, and that’s when the doctor, respiratory therapist, nurses, everybody comes into the room. We start chest compressions or CPR or that kind of stuff. This one patient’s heart is not working. So I call the code blue. We all get in there. We start doing the chest compressions. Five minutes later, we get the patient back. We all go back about our work. Twenty minutes later, same thing happens again. We start doing the chest compressions. We start pushing medications as fast as we can to get the patient back again.

The spouse comes into the hospital. I explain: “Just so you know, this is what happened before. It could possibly happen again. If it does, I’m going to need you to step outside of the room.” And as I’m explaining this, sure enough, it happens again. We lose the pulse. We lose the heartbeat. So I ask her to leave the room. Everyone gets in there, and we start going for it. We went for almost two hours: chest compressions, pushing medications, shocking the patient’s heart.

The doctor is ultimately the one who makes the decision about when we stop, and they call time of death. But typically in situations like that, where it’s unexpected and sudden, they want to make sure that everybody can go home that night feeling OK about what they did, knowing that they did everything. And after an hour, he stops, turns to the room and asks: Does anyone have a problem with us stopping?

I didn’t have a problem, but then as he’s saying that, I look out the window, and the patient’s wife is just watching us. She’s been sitting out there watching us for an hour, and no one’s saying anything.

And I ask them to keep going.

So we did. We went almost for another hour after that, and we didn’t get the patient back. He ended up dying.

But I think for me, that was important — to keep going. Not because we thought we would get them back, but so that his wife would know that we did everything we could.

I still go to bed with her face kind of burned into my mind, of just seeing her sitting out there watching us, and that’s what kills me.

COLUMBUS, OHIO

As of Dec. 7, Ohio has seen 475,024 total confirmed cases and 6,959 deaths.

Kahlia Anderson, 32

ICU, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

I graduated from nursing school in May 2019. I started here at the Wexner in August. Our orientation is a 20-week program, and so I came out on my own Jan. 12, 2020. The pandemic hit us at the end of February.

In nursing school, I think your biggest fears are making med errors, or harming your patient in some way, or just not knowing how to do everything. Did I check my patient’s blood pressure before I gave this blood pressure medication, or did I give the correct dose of a specific medication? I had heard stories about that on the unit, like make sure you’re careful with the needle stick, or make sure you’re careful with this medication. And I don’t even think about those kinds of things anymore.

Now it’s the fear of the unknown. It’s the fear that anything could happen because of this virus and my patient could die regardless of what I do.

When I got my first covid-positive patient, I remember thinking: Somebody did the assignment wrong because there’s no way that they believe that I should be taking care of this patient. I can remember the feeling. I can remember the day. It was a weekend. I was on a day shift. And I was thinking to myself: Who trusted me, the new nurse to take care of a covid-positive patient? How am I going to do this? How am I going to keep this patient safe? How am I going to keep myself safe? Am I safe? Wait, who cares about me? Let’s get back to the patient. What do they need?

At the time, I didn’t even understand some of the ventilator settings because I was still that new, and it was still that fresh to me. And I thought: This machine is doing that much work for them, and I don’t know enough about it, but I’m going to make sure that I get it done and I’m going to figure it out today to make sure that this patient gets everything that they need. And I’m going to call their family and double check with them and check in with them and call them.

That patient is alive. That patient is no longer in the hospital. As far as I know, that patient is home and safe with family.

I would feel like: There’s someone more experienced. There’s someone more adequate to deal with this. And I was like — oh, it’s me. This is me, I’m doing this, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

I saw new nurses come out of orientation, and I saw the type of assignments that they would get. So my mind fixated on like: I’m going to get patients that are ready to transfer out. They can talk, they can eat. They’re just waiting for a bed on another unit. Or maybe it’s a patient who needs long-term care. So they’re waiting to go to a facility to be discharged. And so I was thinking to myself: I’m going to get my feet wet. It’s going to be great. I’m going to build up this experience, and then I’m going to start getting sicker patients, and I’m going to be ready.

Once covid hit, there was no room for those types of patients anymore. Everyone had covid, everyone was sick, everyone was intubated or approaching intubation.

And for me, I just wanted my first experience. I wanted to have the simple experience of building and getting better. But that’s not what was in store. And I can’t say that I’m upset about it today. I’m grateful for this experience. I don’t wish this pandemic on anyone. I wish it was not here. I wish that it was different. But as a nurse, as a new nurse, these experiences are unique to me. It’s making me a better nurse. It’s made me a better person, and I can only continue to just be.

We did cry in the beginning, and now not so much. I think we all struggled when we had a young death. Someone in their 20s was very difficult for us. Because you think: That was a young life. What a young life that was, and they’re not here anymore. Because of a virus. That’s hard. It’s very hard.

But now it’s just — it’s almost everyone’s story.

FTC signals nurses’ wages will become important measure in antitrust enforcement

Posted on by • Posted in Antitrust, Competition, Employee Compensation, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Market Consolidation, Market Power, Market Share, Mergers & Acquisitions, Nurses, Nurses Compensation, Nurses Union, Pricing • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/ftc-signals-nurses-wages-important-measure-antitrust-enforcement-hospitals/589142/

The Federal Trade Commission is revamping a key tool in its arsenal to police competition across a plethora of industries, a development that could have direct implications for future healthcare deals.

In September, the FTC said it was expanding its retrospective merger program to consider new questions and areas of study that the bureau previously has not researched extensively.

One avenue it will zero in on is labor markets, including workers and their wages, and how mergers may ultimately affect them.

It’s an area that could be ripe for scrutinizing healthcare deals, and the FTC has already begun to use this argument to bolster its case against anticompetitive tie-ups. Prior to this new argument, the antitrust agency — in its legal challenges and research — has primarily focused on how healthcare mergers affect prices.

The retrospective program is hugely important to the FTC as it is a way to examine past mergers and produce research that can be used as evidence in legal challenges to block future anticompetitive deals or even challenge already consummated deals.

“I do suspect that healthcare is a significant concern underlying why they decided to expand this program,” Bill Horton, an attorney with Jones Walker LLP, said.

So far this year, the FTC has tried to block two proposed hospital mergers. The agency sued to stop a proposed tie-up in Philadelphia in February between Jefferson Health and Albert Einstein Healthcare Network.

More recently, the FTC is attempting to bar Methodist Le Boneheur in Memphis from buying two local hospitals from Tenet Health in a $350 million deal.

In both cases, the agency alleges the deals will end the robust competition that exists and harm consumers in the form of higher prices, including steeper insurance premiums, and diminished quality of services.

The agency has long leaned on the price argument (and its evidence) to challenge proposed transactions. However, recent actions signal the FTC will include a new argument: depressed wages, particularly those of nurses.

In a letter to Texas regulators in September, the FTC warned that if the state allowed a health system to acquire its only other competitor in rural West Texas, it would lead to limited wage growth among registered nurses as an already consolidated market compresses further.

As part of its arguments, the FTC pointed to a 2020 study that researched the effects on labor market concentration and worker outcomes.

Last year, the agency sent orders to five health insurance companies and two health systems to provide information so it could further study the affect COPAs, or Certificates of Public Advantage, have on price and quality. The FTC also noted it was planning to study the impact on wages.

FTC turned to review after string of defeats

A number of losses in the 1990s led the agency to conduct a hospital merger retrospective, Chris Garmon, a former economist with the FTC, said. Garmon has helped conduct and author retrospective reviews.

Between 1994 and 2000, there were about 900 hospital mergers by the U.S Department of Justice’s count. The bureau lost all seven of the cases they attempted to litigate in that time period, according to the DOJ.

The defendants in those cases succeeded by employing two types of defenses. The nonprofit hospitals would argue they would not charge higher prices because as nonprofits they had the best interests of the community in mind. Second, hospitals tried to argue that their markets were much larger than the FTC’s definition, and that they compete with hospitals many miles away.

Retrospective studies found evidence that undermined these claims. That’s why the studies are so important, Garmon said.

“It really is to better understand what happens after mergers,” Garmon said. It’s an evaluation exercise, given many transaction occur prospectively or before a deal is consummated. So the reviews help the FTC answer questions like: “Did we get it right? Or did we let any mergers we shouldn’t let through?”

An Oregon nurse bragged on TikTok about not wearing a mask outside of work. She’s now on administrative leave.

Posted on by • Posted in Administrative Leave, Asymptomatic Transmission, Core Values, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Employee, Ethics, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, False Hope, False Narrative, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Human Resources, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Judgement, Leadership Decentralized, Management, Mortality, National Strategy, Nurses, Nurses Leadership, Nurses Union, Out of Control, Pandemic, Partisanship, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Trust, Quarantine, Scientists, Social Distancing, Talent Management, Values • Leave a comment
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/30/oregon-nurse-tik-tok-covid/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2u2_Hi-4qfdi_K1kZptN3h_J5sPqMX3TG8Ot8WeeBFUBiMyZ5ff7wq4xM
Nurse placed on leave for bragging on TikTok about not wearing a mask - Mirror Online

Dressed in blue scrubs and carrying a stethoscope around her neck, an oncology nurse in Salem, Ore., looked to the Grinch as inspiration while suggesting that she ignored coronavirus guidelines outside of work.

In a TikTok video posted Friday, she lip-dubbed a scene from “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” to get her point across to her unaware colleagues: She does not wear a mask in public when she’s not working at Salem Hospital.

“When my co-workers find out I still travel, don’t wear a mask when I’m out and let my kids have play dates,” the nurse wrote in a caption accompanying the video, which has since been deleted.

Following swift online backlash from critics, her employer, Salem Health, announced Saturday that the nurse had been placed on administrative leave. In a statement, the hospital said the nurse, who has not been publicly identified by her employer, “displayed cavalier disregard for the seriousness of this pandemic and her indifference towards physical distancing and masking out of work.”

“We also want to assure you that this one careless statement does not reflect the position of Salem Health or the hardworking and dedicated caregivers who work here,” said the hospital, adding that an investigation is underway.

Salem Health did not respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment as of early Monday.

The nurse’s video offers a startling and rare glimpse of a front-line health-care worker blatantly playing down a virus that has killed at least 266,000 Americans. It also has been seen in some coronavirus patients, some on their deathbeds, who still refuse to believe the pandemic is real.

The incident comes at a time when Oregon has continued to see a spike in new coronavirus cases and virus-related hospitalizations. Just last week, the state’s daily reported deaths and hospitalizations rose by 33.3 and 24.2 percent respectively, according to The Post’s coronavirus tracker. At least 74,120 Oregonians have been infected with the virus since late February; 905 of them have died.

The clip posted to TikTok on Friday shows the nurse mocking the health guidelines while using audio from a scene in which the Grinch reveals his true identity to Cindy Lou Who.

Although the original video was removed, TikTok users have shared a “duet” video posted by another user critical of the nurse, which had more than 274,000 reactions as of early Monday.

Soon after she posted the clip, hundreds took to social media and the hospital’s Facebook page to report the nurse’s video and demand an official response from her employer. Some requested that the nurse be removed from her position and that her license be revoked.

Hospital officials told the Salem Statesman Journal that the investigation is aiming to figure out which other staff members and patients have come in contact with the nurse, who works in the oncology department.

But for some, the hospital’s apologies and actions were not enough.

“The video supplied should be evidence enough,” one Facebook user commented. “She needs to be FIRED. Not on PAID leave. As someone fighting cancer, I can only imagine how her patients feel after seeing this news.”

The hospital thanked those who alerted them of the incident, emphasizing that its staff, patients and visitors must adhere to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

“These policies are strictly enforced among staff from the moment they leave their cars at work to the moment they start driving home,” hospital officials told the Statesman Journal.

As thousands of athletes get coronavirus tests, nurses wonder: What about us?

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/11/27/nurses-athletes-sports-coronavirus-tests/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F2d129f3%2F5fc12d5b9d2fda0efb75518d%2F5b63a342ade4e2779550ca1b%2F9%2F71%2F5fc12d5b9d2fda0efb75518d

On her day off not long ago, emergency room nurse Jane Sandoval sat with her husband and watched her favorite NFL team, the San Francisco 49ers. She’s off every other Sunday, and even during the coronavirus pandemic, this is something of a ritual. Jane and Carlos watch, cheer, yell — just one couple’s method of escape.

“It makes people feel normal,” she says.

For Sandoval, though, it has become more and more difficult to enjoy as the season — and the pandemic — wears on. Early in the season, the 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan was one of five coaches fined for violating the league’s requirement that all sideline personnel wear face coverings. Jane noticed, even as coronavirus cases surged again in California and across the United States, that Levi’s Stadium was considering admitting fans to watch games.

But the hardest thing to ignore, Sandoval says, is that when it comes to coronavirus testing, this is a nation of haves and have-nots.

Among the haves are professional and college athletes, in particular those who play football. From Nov. 8 to 14, the NFL administered 43,148 tests to 7,856 players, coaches and employees. Major college football programs supply dozens of tests each day, an attempt — futile as it has been — to maintain health and prevent schedule interruptions. Major League Soccer administered nearly 5,000 tests last week, and Major League Baseball conducted some 170,000 tests during its truncated season.

Sandoval, meanwhile, is a 58-year-old front-line worker who regularly treats patients either suspected or confirmed to have been infected by the coronavirus. In eight months, she has never been tested. She says her employer, California Pacific Medical Center, refuses to provide testing for its medical staff even after possible exposure.

Watching sports, then, no longer represents an escape from reality for Sandoval. Instead, she says, it’s a signal of what the nation prioritizes.

“There’s an endless supply in the sports world,” she says of coronavirus tests. “You’re throwing your arms up. I like sports as much as the next person. But the disparity between who gets tested and who doesn’t, it doesn’t make any sense.”

This month, registered nurses gathered in Los Angeles to protest the fact that UCLA’s athletic department conducted 1,248 tests in a single week while health-care workers at UCLA hospitals were denied testing. Last week National Nurses United, the country’s largest nursing union, released the results of a survey of more than 15,000 members. About two-thirds reported they had never been tested.

Since August, when NFL training camps opened, the nation’s most popular and powerful sports league — one that generates more than $15 billion in annual revenue — has conducted roughly 645,000 coronavirus tests.

“These athletes and teams have a stockpile of covid testing, enough to test them at will,” says Michelle Gutierrez Vo, another registered nurse and sports fan in California. “And it’s painful to watch. It seemed like nobody else mattered or their lives are more important than ours.”

Months into the pandemic, and with vaccines nearing distribution, testing in the United States remains something of a luxury. Testing sites are crowded, and some patients still report waiting days for results. Sandoval said nurses who suspect they’ve been exposed are expected to seek out a testing site on their own, at their expense, and take unpaid time while they wait for results — in effect choosing between their paycheck and their health and potentially that of others.

“The current [presidential] administration did not focus on tests and instead focused on the vaccine,” says Mara Aspinall, a professor of biomedical diagnostics at Arizona State University. “We should have focused with the same kind of ‘warp speed’ on testing. Would we still have needed a vaccine? Yes, but we would’ve saved more lives in that process and given more confidence to people to go to work.”

After a four-month shutdown amid the pandemic’s opening wave, professional sports returned in July. More than just a contest on television, it was, in a most unusual year, a symbol of comfort and routine. But as the sports calendar has advanced and dramatic adjustments have been made, it has become nearly impossible to ignore how different everything looks, sounds and feels.

Stadiums are empty, or mostly empty, while some sports have bubbles and others just pretend their spheres are impermeable. Coaches stand on the sideline with fogged-up face shields; rosters and schedules are constantly reshuffled. On Saturday, the college football game between Clemson and Florida State was called off three hours before kickoff. Dodger Stadium, home of the World Series champions, is a massive testing site, with lines of cars snaking across the parking lot.

Sports, in other words, aren’t a distraction from a polarized nation and its response to a global pandemic. They have become a constant reminder of them. And when some nurses turn to sports for an attempt at escape, instead it’s just one more image of who gets priority for tests and, often, who does not.

“There is a disconnect when you watch sports now. It’s not the same. Covid changed everything,” says Gutierrez Vo, who works for Kaiser Permanente in Fremont, Calif. “I try not to think about it.”

Sandoval tries the same, telling herself that watching a game is among the few things that make it feel like February again. Back then, the coronavirus was a distant threat and the 49ers were in the Super Bowl.

That night, Sandoval had a shift in the ER, and between patients, she would duck into the break room or huddle next to a colleague checking the score on the phone. The 49ers were playing the Kansas City Chiefs, and Sandoval would recall that her favorite team blowing a double-digit lead represented the mightiest stress that day.

Now during shifts, Sandoval sometimes argues with patients who insist the virus that has infected them is a media-driven hoax. She masks up and wears a face shield even if a patient hasn’t been confirmed with the coronavirus, though she can’t help second-guessing herself.

“Did I wash my hands? Did I touch my glasses? Was I extra careful?” she says.

If Sandoval suspects she has been exposed, she says, she doesn’t bother requesting a test. She says the hospital will say there aren’t enough. So instead she self-monitors and loads up on vitamin C and zinc, hoping the tickle in her throat disappears. If symptoms persist, which she says hasn’t happened yet, she plans to locate a testing site on her own. But that would mean taking unpaid time, paying for costs out of pocket and staying home — and forfeiting a paycheck — until results arrive.

National Nurses United says some of its members are being told to report to work anyway as they wait for results that can take three to five days. Sutter Health, the hospital system that oversees California Pacific Medical Center, said in a statement to The Washington Post that it offers tests to employees whose exposure is deemed high-risk and to any employee experiencing symptoms. Symptomatic employees are placed on paid leave while awaiting test results, according to the statement.

“As long as an essential healthcare worker is asymptomatic,” Sutter’s statement read, “they can continue to work and self-monitor while awaiting the test result.”

Sandoval said employees have been told the hospital’s employee health division will contact anyone who has been exposed. Though she believes she’s exposed during every shift, Sandoval says employee health has never contacted her to offer a test or conduct contact tracing.

“If you feel like you need to get tested, you do that on your own,” she says. Sandoval suspects the imbalance is economic. In September, Forbes reported NFL team revenue was up 7 percent despite the pandemic. Last week Sutter Health reported a $607 million loss through the first nine months of 2020.

Sandoval tries to avoid thinking about that, so she keeps heading back to work and hoping for the best. Though she says her passion for sports is less intense now, she nonetheless likes to talk sports when a patient wears a team logo. She asks about a star player or a recent game. She says she is looking forward to the 49ers’ next contest and the 2021 baseball season.

Sometimes, Sandoval says, patients ask about her job and the ways she avoids contracting the coronavirus. She must be tested most every day, Sandoval says the patients always say.

And she just rolls her eyes and chuckles. That, she says, only happens if you’re an athlete.

Facing a third-wave workforce crisis

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Optimizing Healthcare Workforce Management for High-Value Care

Over the past week, as coronavirus cases have spiked and COVID hospitalizations have grown to alarming levels, we’ve been keeping a close pulse on the situation at our member health systems in markets across the country.

Here’s what we can report: admissions are rising on a curve that looks increasingly vertical.

The ICU is less of a problem than inpatient beds, and while no one wants to cancel non-emergent procedures again, having just worked through the backlog of cases that were postponed in late spring and early summer, discussions about reallocating capacity are starting again. Some are considering shifting more surgeries to ambulatory centers, others are planning to dedicate more space to COVID-positive cases in an attempt to segregate the “hot zone”, and still others are exploring home-based care for certain medical admissions. Fortunately, the supply of PPE feels sufficient for the time being, as does testing capacity.
 
The number one concern among everyone we’ve talked to: staffing. Because of the high level of community spread, many are now losing nurses and other key staff to COVID isolation, with one system reporting that 35 percent of its critical care nurses at a key hospital had tested positive or were in quarantine after exposure. Staff are burned out, exhausted from the past eight months, and turnover rates are spiking. Because the third wave is so widespread, it’s become harder to find nurses from other markets who can temporarily relocate to help with a surge of cases. And the rates being charged for “agency” nurses—stopgap staff hired on a temporary basis—are going through the roof.

The staffing issue may prove to be the biggest crisis of the third wave of COVID, given how difficult it is to solve; there’s no Defense Production Act or National Guard supply chain for nurses. At best, hospitals will find themselves cobbling together a solution by cross-training staff, paying extra for temporary workers, and asking their already-overtaxed workforce to weather yet another storm. We’re eager to hear any creative approaches to solving the staffing challenge as winter approaches, and we’ve dedicated a senior member of our team to tracking the workforce crisis. Let us know what you’re seeing.

Hospitals Are Reeling Under a 46 Percent Spike in Covid-19 Patients

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The number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus has climbed significantly from a month ago, straining cities that have fewer resources to weather the surges.

The patient who died on Tuesday morning at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center was rolled out of her room under a white sheet. One nurse, fighting back tears, stood silently in the hall as the outline of the body passed by — one more death in an eight-month-old pandemic that has no end in sight.

“Those moments, they hit the soul,” said Jodie Gord, a nurse manager who oversees a team of about 120 people at the hospital in Milwaukee.

Aurora St. Luke’s is far from alone in coming under strain. Hospitals around the United States are reeling from the rampaging spread of the coronavirus, many of them in parts of the country that initially had been spared the worst.

Approaching the eve of the election, President Trump has downplayed the steep rise in cases, attributing much of it to increased testing. But the number of people hospitalized for the virus tells a different story, climbing an estimated 46 percent from a month ago and raising fears about the capacity of regional health care systems to respond to overwhelming demand.

A coronavirus testing site at El Paso Community College.

The exploding case numbers point to a volatile new phase in the pandemic, coming after earlier waves hit large cities such as New York, then Sun Belt states like Florida and Arizona. While some of those places have begun to bring the virus under control, the surge of hospitalizations is crippling some cities with fewer resources.

In El Paso, where the number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 has more than tripled over the past three weeks, doctors at University Medical Center have started airlifting some patients to hospitals as far away as San Antonio while treating others in a field hospital in a nearby parking lot. Across the border in Mexico, the mayor of Ciudad Juárez, himself hospitalized after testing positive for the virus for the second time, is urging a temporary ban on U.S. citizens crossing into his city.

“We have never seen this in El Paso,” said Dr. Joel Hendryx, chief medical officer at University Medical Center, one of the largest hospitals along the border. Citing the need for field hospitals, Dr. Hendryx drew a sharp contrast to the city’s earlier surge in July, when mitigation measures drove case numbers down.

Dr. Hendryx’s hospital had 195 inpatient coronavirus cases as of Tuesday compared with about 30 a month ago. In addition to the parking lot tents, officials in El Paso are converting the downtown convention center into a 50-bed hospital. Hundreds of health workers from other parts of Texas are deploying to El Paso, including an ambulance strike team with paramedics from the Houston area.

The situation is also becoming critical in states such as Idaho, Missouri, New Mexico and Utah, with frontline workers exhausted and hospitals struggling to find replacements for those testing positive each day.

At St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center in Twin Falls, Idaho, where more than one-third of patients have Covid-19, administrators are sending children to a hospital in Boise, two hours away. The influx of patients from rural areas with little health infrastructure is similarly straining hospitals in Wisconsin, where cases have increased 53 percent from two weeks ago.

Across the country, case numbers have risen to fearsome new levels in recent days, with the seven-day average for new cases exceeding 70,000 for the first time in the pandemic. Twenty-six states are at or near record numbers for new infections. More than 500,000 cases have been announced in the past week. And exactly zero states are seeing sustained declines in case numbers.

On a per capita basis, smaller cities and rural counties in the Upper Midwest and Mountain West are struggling most acutely. North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Montana lead the country in new infections per capita. Of the 12 metro areas with the highest rates of new cases over the past two weeks, 10 are in North Dakota or Wisconsin.

But the dismal trend lines are not confined to those regions. North Carolina, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia have recently set seven-day records for new cases. And more big cities are starting to spiral, with alarming trends emerging in Chicago, Milwaukee and Newark.

And while the escalating case numbers had not been accompanied by a steep rise in deaths, that trend is starting to change. About 800 deaths are now being recorded across the country each day, far fewer than in the spring but up slightly from earlier this month.

Cities and towns nationwide are rushing to impose new restrictions. In Idaho, Gov. Brad Little backtracked on reopening but stopped short of a statewide mask mandate. Mr. Little limited indoor gatherings to 50 people, required masks at long-term care facilities and placed new restrictions on how bars and restaurants could serve their customers.

In Newark, all nonessential businesses will have to close at 8 p.m. beginning on Tuesday. Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago imposed a curfew under which nonessential businesses must shut down from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., and bars without a food license are no longer allowed to serve customers indoors.

In Fargo, N.D., Mayor Tim Mahoney used his emergency powers to pass the first mask mandate in the state. The mayors of Nixa and Ozark in Missouri imposed mask mandates after appeals by nearby hospitals overwhelmed by coronavirus hospitalizations.

On one of the I.C.U. floors at Aurora St. Luke’s in Milwaukee, the mood was somber on Tuesday morning as doctors and nurses made their rounds. Twenty of the 24 beds were filled, and many of the patients were on ventilators.

But the staff put on a brave face. They gave thumbs-up to patients from the hallways, walked into rooms to greet others and assisted one woman as she ate her breakfast.

Before noon, an older woman was transferred to the I.C.U. from the Covid-19 floor. Within 30 minutes of her arrival, loud beeping sent staff members running to her room, frantically grabbing personal protection gear.

The patient’s oxygen levels had plummeted to dangerously low levels, and she was going into cardiac arrest. A nurse practitioner called the patient’s family, making it clear there was a possibility she would not make it.

A staff member performed compressions on the woman in hopes of keeping her alive. After several minutes, her condition stabilized — for the moment.

She was the second patient who needed such care in just three hours. When the nurses and doctors stepped away for a breath, the woman lay on the bed, now intubated, eyes glazed over and her face pale. It was hard to see any clear signs of breathing.

Some staff members patted each other on the back. Others took deep breaths. A health care worker walked out of the patient’s room, holding a small plastic bag in her hand. Inside was jewelry to give to the family, said Ms. Gord, the nurse manager, in case the woman died.

Staff members still seemed in shock over the death of the other patient from that morning. She had become dear to the I.C.U. team, said Ms. Gord, who stood quietly and with obvious emotion as the stretcher slipped past. “Bless her soul,” she murmured. “Sweet little lady.”

Staff members said they were fighting constant exhaustion. “What’s going to happen when we cannot take care of these patients?” said Dr. Pedro Salinas, a critical care specialist, who worries about how much longer the staff can endure. “They are emotionally and mentally exhausted.”

The prospect of ending up in an overcrowded hospital ward is making some who are sick with the virus hesitant to check in. At the hospital in El Paso, staff members said some Covid-19 patients were arriving in the emergency room so debilitated that they required intubation almost immediately.

Sandra Garcia, 31, an El Paso resident who tested positive for the coronavirus last week, said she had been grappling with fatigue, shortness of breath and a loss of taste and smell, but had refrained from seeking care in the city’s crowded hospitals.

In the meantime, she is caring for a 13-year-old who also has Covid-19 and 5-year-old twins, who are all studying online from home. Ms. Garcia said she questioned why Dee Margo, El Paso’s mayor, had failed to order a shutdown of the city to curb the spike in cases.

“He’s just trying to get re-elected and it’s disgusting,” Ms. Garcia said.

Last week, Mr. Margo announced new restrictions such as closing parks to league and tournament play, but he said an order for a full city shutdown would need to come from the governor of Texas.

Dr. German Hernandez, a nephrologist who has been caring for patients at several hospitals in El Paso, said the situation was so acute that patients on oxygen were being kept in rooms in the trauma area of University Medical Center. He said that could be devastating in the event of a disaster such as the August 2019 mass shooting at a Walmart in the city that left 23 people dead.

“God forbid we have another Aug. 3 shooting because we can’t handle it right now,” Dr. Hernandez said. “We have no buffer.”

10 healthcare execs share predictions for nursing in the next 5 years

Posted on by • Posted in Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Nurses, Nurses Advance Practice, Nurses Leadership, Nurses Shortage, Pandemic, Robot-Assisted Care, Telemedicine, Virtual Care Strategy, Virtual Healthcare, Virtual Hospital, Virtual Workforce, Vulnerable Populations, Workforce - Clinical, Workforce Diversity, Workforce Shortages, Workforce Strategy • Leave a comment

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The future of nursing infographic | Cipherhealth

The pandemic put nurses on the front lines of the battle against COVID-19 and caused shifts in the way they provide care.

During this year, nurses have adapted to increased adoption of telehealth and virtual patient monitoring, as well as constantly evolving staffing needs. 

These factors — and others, such as the physical and emotional conditions nurses have faced due to the public health crisis — are sure to affect nursing in the years to come. Here, 10 healthcare executives and leaders share their predictions for nursing in the next five years.

Editor’s note: Responses were edited lightly for length and clarity.

Beverly Bokovitz, DNP, RN. Vice President and Chief Nurse Executive of UC Health (Cincinnati): In the next five years, as we continue to encounter a national nursing shortage, I expect to see additional innovative strategies to complement the care provided at the bedside. 

One of these strategies will be some type of robot-assisted care. From delivery of medications to answering call lights — and completing simple tasks like needing a blanket or requesting that the heat be adjusted — we will see more electronic solutions. These solutions will allow for a better patient experience and help to exceed the expectations of our patients as customers.

Of course, nothing can take the place of skilled and compassionate bedside care, but many tasks could be automated — and will be — to supplement the professional nursing shortage.

Natalia Cineas, DNP, RN. Senior Vice President and Chief Nurse Executive of NYC Health + Hospitals (New York City): Nurses will continue to play a vital role in addressing the health inequities and social determinants of health among vulnerable populations as the nursing workforce itself becomes more diverse and inclusive. As the largest segment of the healthcare workforce — with some 4 million nurses active in the U.S. — nurses represent the faces of the communities in which they serve. As America becomes a more diverse and inclusive society, so too will the nursing profession become more diverse and inclusive. Currently, industry estimates indicate that between one quarter to one-third of all U.S. nurses identify as a member of a minority group, with between 19 percent and 24 percent of U.S. nurses identifying themselves as Black/African-American; 5 percent to 9 percent identifying themselves as Hispanic; and about 3 percent identifying themselves as Asian. The percentage of minority nurses has been rising steadily for the past two decades and is expected to continue to climb in the coming years.

Blacks and underserved minority populations face numerous genetic, environmental, cultural and socioeconomic factors that account for health disparities, and the impact is particularly visible in the areas of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, pregnancy and childbirth mortality, and cancer outcomes, as well as the enormous toll of the current novel coronavirus global pandemic, where communities of color have been among the hardest hit populations. 

In New York City alone, statistics compiled by the city’s health department show Blacks and Hispanics together account for 65 percent of all COVID-19 cases; represented 70 percent of all hospitalizations due to COVID-19; and, sadly, 68 percent of all deaths caused by COVID-19. As demonstrated during this pandemic, in the future, technology such as telehealth and virtual patient monitoring will play a major role in the care of patients. There will be a vast need to address social determinants of health by educating and providing resources to allow utilization of this technology such as using “wearable tech” to monitor ongoing health issues, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart conditions and other chronic illnesses.

Ryannon Frederick, MSN, RN. Chief Nursing Officer of Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.): Nursing research will experience extraordinary demand and growth driven by a realization that both complex and unmet patient needs can often be best served by the role of a professional registered nurse. Nurses are uniquely positioned to implement symptom and self-management interventions for patients and their caregivers. Significant disruption in healthcare, including increasing use of technology, will lead to a dramatic shift to understand the role of the RN in improving patient outcomes and implementing interventions using novel approaches. Nursing researchers will provide a scientific body of evidence proving equivalent, if not better, patient care outcomes that can be obtained at a lower cost than traditional models, leading to an even greater demand for the role of the professional nurse in patient care. 

Karen Higdon, DNP, RN, Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer of Baptist Health Louisville (Ky.): The value of nursing has never been more apparent. Nurses have led the front line during this pandemic. In the next five years, we must be flexible and creative in establishing new models of care, specifically around roles that support nursing, such as assistant and tech roles. Creating roles with clear role definition, that are attractive and meaningful for nursing support will help build consistent, high-quality models for nursing to lead. This consistency, along with IT capabilities that enhance workflow, will better allow nurses to work at the top of their scope.

Karen Hill, DNP, RN. COO and Chief Nursing Officer of Baptist Health Lexington (Ky.): 2020 was declared the “Year of the Nurse” and this reality has never been more true than realizing the personal and professional sacrifices of nurses in dealing with issues surrounding the pandemic. The next five years will require nursing professionals to be flexible to address new, unknown emerging issues in all settings, to be open to new opportunities for leadership in hospitals, schools and communities and to use technology and telehealth to provide safer care to patients. Nurses need to evaluate our practices and traditions that are value-added and leave behind the task orientation of the past. We need to honor our legacy and create our path.

Therese Hudson-Jinks, MSN, RN. Chief Nursing Officer and Chief Patient Experience Officer at Tufts Medical Center and Tufts Children’s Hospital (Boston): Over the next five years, I expect that the support and retention of clinical nurses will become the top priority of every CNO and executive team, given nurses’ direct impact on supporting the business of healthcare. This will be particularly critical because there will be a concerning shortage of experienced clinical nurses as a result of advancing technologies increasing complexity in care, additional nurse roles created outside traditional areas, fierce competition for talent between large healthcare systems, aging baby boom workforce retiring at higher rates year over year, and a lack of sufficient numbers of PhD-prepared nurses working in academia and supporting higher enrollments.

I also believe that CNOs will be laser-focused on creating the practice environment that enhances retention of top, talented clinical nurses, and we will put a greater emphasis on the influence of effective nursing leadership in reaching that goal. In addition, I fully expect that nurses will be seen more as individuals with talents and experience than ever before — not just a number on a team, but rather a professional with specific, unique, talents that are highly sought after in competitive markets.

Finally, I anticipate that nursing innovation will blossom, given the exposure of the “innovation/solutionist superpower” within nurses during the pandemic. Philanthropy will grow exponentially in support of nursing innovation as a result.

Carol Koeppel-Olsen, MSN, RN. Vice President of Patient Care Services at Abbott Northwestern Hospital (Minneapolis): During the COVID-19 pandemic nurses have been working in difficult physical and emotional conditions, which may lead to significant turnover after the pandemic resolves. Nurses have a commitment to serving others and will persevere until the crisis is past; however, when conditions improve, many nurses may decide to pursue careers outside acute care settings. A possible turnover, coupled with a service economy that has been devastated, may result in large numbers of former service workers seeking stable jobs in nursing. Hospitals will have to be nimble and creative to onboard an influx of new nurses that are not only new to the profession but new to healthcare. Tactics to onboard these new nurses may include the use of retired RNs as mentors, instructor-model clinical groups in the work setting, job shadowing and aptitude testing to determine the best clinical fit.

Jacalyn Liebowitz, DNP, RN. Senior Vice President and System Chief Nurse Officer of Adventist Health (Roseville, Calif.): Over the next five years, I see nurses providing more hospital-based care in the home using remote technology. Based on that shift, we will see lower-acuity patients move into home-based care, and higher-acuity care in hospitals will increase. With that, hospital beds will be used at a different level. My bold prediction is that we will not need as many beds, but we will need higher acute care in the hospitals.

Nurses will learn differently. As we are seeing now, nurses have not been able to train in the traditional way. They are already using more remote technology to educate, onboard and orient to their roles. It looks and feels vastly different, and nurses need to be comfortable with that.

As for patient care, I think data that can be gleaned from wearable biometrics, and the use of artificial intelligence will help predict patient care on a patient-by-patient basis. Nurses will work with AI as part of their thought process, instead of completely focusing on their own judgment and assessment. 

I also believe we are going to face a nursing shortage post-COVID for a few reasons. Due to the emotional and physical toll of responding to a pandemic, some nurses will decide to retire, and another group will leave based on the risks that go hand-in-hand with the profession. 

As for patient care, we are going to collaborate differently. There will be more video conferencing regarding collaboration around the patient. And I think in the future we will see that the full continuum of care will include a wellness plan.

Debi Pasley, MSN, RN. Senior Vice President Chief Nursing Officer of Christus Health (Irving, Texas): I believe the demand for nurses will become increasingly visible and newsworthy throughout the pandemic. This could drive increases in salaries and numbers of qualified candidates seeking nursing as a profession in the medium and long term. The shortage will, however, continue to be a factor, leading to more remote work options to both supplement nursing at the bedside and substitute for in-person care.

Denise Ray, RN. Chief Nursing Executive of Piedmont Healthcare (Atlanta): Nursing schools will need to focus on emergency management and critical care training utilizing a team nursing model. While nursing has become very specialty-driven, the pandemic has demonstrated gaps in our ability to adapt as quickly utilizing a team model where nurses lead and direct care teams. By implementing a team model and enhancing education in the areas of emergency management and critical care, nursing can adapt quickly to the ever-changing environment.

Also, communication with patients and families will take on different dimensions with wider use of tele-therapeutic communication. Nurses will be leaders and liaisons in the process, connecting physicians, patients and patient families virtually. Nurses will play a key role in integrating patient family members as true patient care partners — making sure they have the information they need to serve an active caregiving role for their family members during and after hospitalization. We’ll also see more nurses becoming advanced nurse practitioners, playing an expanded role in all healthcare settings.