Doctors or Nurses Connection

Just wondered if the news on the hospitals being full is true. First hand reports are always best.
News says ICU almost full all over the state. “ICUs statewide fill to capacity.”

suzuki wrote:

Just wondered if the news on the hospitals being full is true. First hand reports are always best.
News says ICU almost full all over the state. “ICUs statewide fill to capacity.”

Not sure about ICU beds but the hospital floor that my wife took care of covid patients on is NOT full. They are extremely short on staff. several nurses left when the mandate was set in place. They also lost Aids, and HUC’s.

Angler II wrote:

Not sure about ICU beds but the hospital floor that my wife took care of covid patients on is NOT full. They are extremely short on staff. several nurses left when the mandate was set in place. They also lost Aids, and HUC’s.

This is what I am hearing as well.

You can’t believe your lyin’ eyes? Headlines today:
Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Vaccinations urged ahead of holidays as COVID-19 fills Minn. hospitals
St. Paul Pioneer Press: MN hospitals: ‘We’re heartbroken. We’re overwhelmed.’
Duluth News Tribune: Minnesota hospitals ‘overwhelmed’ by continued COVID surge

I’m guessing the doctors and nurses are too busy to answer your post.

My mother is a recently retired nurse for Hennepin County. She still keeps in touch with her old co workers. HCMC has been at capacity for a while now and there is currently a team of nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, and other support staff there from the Department of Defense that are helping them.

I believe another team from DoD was deployed to St Cloud.

What I heard yesterday is that the hospitals are short staffed AND the quality(?) of care could be changing because of the staffing. Which to me, reading between the lines is a cost saving measure. It seemed more like a push to promote vaccines. Not saying it is, but this is the way the reporting came across to me.

A nurse friend of mine work 3 extra 12 hour shift and was compensated @ $120.00 per hour.

The new “norm” will be higher prices with less care. Well, I believe that’s what they are angling for.

What a mess. Sounds like serious evil causing this.

gimruis wrote:

I believe another team from DoD was deployed to St Cloud.

I heard this as well, but around 3 weeks ago my wife dislocated and fractured her ankle and I asked about the DoD being in St Cloud and got a funny look. They said they were never deployed here.
The issue isnt beds, its staff. There are fewer people on staff now than a year ago. That $4Billion that Walz got from the Federal Government wasnt put to good use shockingly.

My brother is an abulance dispatcher in the metro. He said they are constantly trying to get people moved around to places that have beds, including using helicopters to move people to hospitals in different states. He said it is a full blown nightmare right now.

No doubt there are hospitals that are full. But I always ask the deeper question of what they are full with? What exactly does “full” mean? Before the pandemic it was stated by many healthcare professionals that these places ran at capacity most of the time bc an empty bed is a bed not making money. How many of these beds that are occupied really need to be occupied rn? I think we all know family members or even ourselves where they want to keep folks for observation when it’s really overly precautious.

Questions go on and on, it’s unfortunate there are no media sources that answer these so we can get a true picture of what’s going on.

I work in a hospital and see it daily. It’s very bad right now. I would do everything possible to avoid injury or illness.

Deuces wrote:

Before the pandemic it was stated by many healthcare professionals that these places ran at capacity most of the time bc an empty bed is a bed not making money.

^^^^^This^^^^^

“My pledge to you is to use the valuable time you are giving… to produce those ICU units, to produce the necessary PPE that keeps our neighbors safe”
-@GovTimWalz announcing stay@home order 3/25/20 👇

MN bed capacity 5/1/20: 10,307
MN bed capacity 12/1/21: 9,272 (-1,035)

Wife is a nurse as well. Short staffing seems to be an issue here in SD as well. There is a recruiter that has been calling and asking her about traveling nursing. Some places around the country are offering $8500/week, with a majority of them around 6K. At this point it sounds like a no brainer.

Jake D wrote:

Wife is a nurse as well. Short staffing seems to be an issue here in SD as well. There is a recruiter that has been calling and asking her about traveling nursing. Some places around the country are offering $8500/week, with a majority of them around 6K. At this point it sounds like a no brainer.

A buddy and his wife both work for Centracare and he said this is why they are short here in St Cloud. The nurses, etc are traveling all over making huge dollars and I cant say I blame them at all.

From what I was told is that the rooms are not full. But the number of people they can accept is maxed out based on the number of staff available to help. Don’t quote this. I have not done the research to see if it is true.

Musky- I heard a rumor from a friend back home that a nurse in the St. Cloud area quit her job and took the same position with the same hospital as a traveling nurse (through a 3rd party) and was making 2-3X

My wife is the lead RN in the local ER & also takes shifts on the floor. Without getting political, taking sides, discussing Covid, Government, etc – here is what I can tell you from her first-hand experience:

Their RN’s start at $37.50 an hour with straight double time for any shifts picked up beyond FTE since Covid started. If you do the math, it’s pretty easy to make ~80k+ a year with only a little experience or the ability to pick up a shift or so each week. They’ve got tenured nurses with multiple levels of certification that are making far beyond 100k. The real dagger is that they have had a vacant position posted for 7 months with one applicant who changed their mind.

Their hospital IS at capacity. They’ve been closed to admissions more often than not. They always have Covid patients who are hospitalized on any given day and have had some Covid deaths. If I broke my leg tomorrow, I’d get shipped to a different community to be treated and receive post operative care.

For outsiders who say hospitals aren’t full because some idiot called it a conspiracy, please sign-up to work in one. Covid is partly to blame. However, the bigger issues are staffing and surge capabilities. The economics of hospitals for decades have been that they try to operate at levels where they are not “over-staffed” with minimal surge capabilities. While hospital administrators who can barely take their own temperature are raking in $200k+, lower paying positions have been trimmed or reallocated to maintain the bottom line. For decades nurses in rural settings have made decent money with modest salary grids, but now when the chaos, stress, and heartbreak of the job have compounded…the hospitals are short staffed and cannot shovel enough money their way to stay open. Hopefully when this pandemic or whatever it is now called recedes – the healthcare field learns a valuable lesson. Administrators, Directors, CEOs, etc. of hospital facilities don’t do S*** except cash their checks. These are the positions that need to be squeezed, not the boots on the ground type workers.

My wife walked into the administrator’s office demanding double time on picked up shifts late this Summer for her fellow nurses + a substantial bump in salaries across the grid on top of the 4% they had already been given(all non union)…she gave them an ultimatum knowing they’d never be able to replace her or any of them. She reminded them that a suit and tie hasn’t taken a pay cut, nor have seen people die. Their counter was they would think about it and arrange a meeting with negotiators. Her final offer was to have it implemented within 48 hours or they’d walk effectively closing the hospital indefinitely as she forwarded attachments to dozens of job openings with sign-on bonuses to the entire staff and copied administration. Within 8 hours the raises and mandatory double time were added to their system.

Bucky Badger, Thank you for answering this question with factual information. Covid patients are using wings of hospitals where general patient care has been taking place. It is very real that you may get shipped to a hospital greater than an hour away depending on your condition due to lack of beds. Our local hospital’s Covid ward is full….This pandemic has really tested our fellow nurses physically and mentally. Really sad that it is political at all….PLEASE get vaccinated…..Chris RN

i dont see how a post like this can be counted on to produce facts and truth. Most people have a pre-determined opinion about what is causing the problems.

i read through all the posts. i think i counted one post from someone giving a first hand account of the situation? Every other post is a “i heard this”….

I use information from posts like this to make determinations too but i dont see a lot of first hand accounts written about here.

Carry On

I was just thinking that. Im seeing answers from both extremes. But one common denominator is understaffing. That seems pretty much confirmed and a hard fact.

suzuki wrote:

I was just thinking that. Im seeing answers from both extremes. But one common denominator is understaffing. That seems pretty much confirmed and a hard fact.

Crappie must have glazed over BigWerms post. The staffing/bed numbers has been widely shared and it is a glaring problem. How do you say you are going to do everything in your power to ensure we have the right approach using the $4billion in money from the Federal Government to attack this and have LESS staffed beds? Now the state MN has a $7B surplus? How does this happen?

I was at the orthopedist yesterday, slowly making my way toward a knee replacement. Part of our discussion was whether elective surgeries were ongoing (knee replacement is considered elective even if you can’t walk). Elective surgeries are being scheduled only if they will not entail an overnight stay in the hospital. Knee replacements are now day surgery so I will be able to be served. She also told me that virtually all ICU beds are filled, largely with COVID patients and non-ICU floors have been converted to COVID floors and are largely full. Orthopedic floors, general surgery floors and others have available beds but not available staff.

Friends who are nurses tell very similar tales. We had dinner with friends last night, the host is a nurse anesthetist at HCMC. He is working only emergency surgeries or day surgeries, no overnight stays.

A nurse in the NICU at HCMC tells the exact same story. Since by definition all of her patients face serious risk, they are continue to accept patients but are full up. Her sister is an ER nurse at Mercy Hospital, same story there. Emergency admissions only She is pulling extra shifts in the COVID wards. Non-COVID, non-ICU floors have open beds but do not have staff.

At the risk of starting a flaming war, all four medical professionals told me that 90% of COVID patients in ICU are unvaccinated. Since only 40% of the population is unvaccinated, this is a scary number.

With regard to staffing shortages – lots of people leaving the medical professions due to burn-out. It takes years to train new doctors, nurses, techs, etc. You can throw $4B at it but can’t buy enough staff to go around. Referenced above was the large amounts of money being thrown at people with those skills.

My wife is a PA at one of the metro hospitals. I can confirm that they are extremely busy! Not in an ICU, but at the hospital.

My kid Sis is an RT in a DT St Paul hospital. It’s not good, it’s not good at all.
She worked Thanksgiving there were to be 10 workers, it was just her and another.

I spent Sunday night in the ER at United Hospital in St. Paul. The waiting room was completely filled with the sickest looking bunch of people I have ever seen. The triage nurse was saying the wait was between four and eight hours. This was at midnight. When I talked to the attending physician he told me there was 30 to 40 people waiting at all times and that the hospital was full, mostly of Covid related patients. God bless those on the front line – really it’s unbelievable what they are going through. My wife is one of them. She’s an RN and works at a local urgent care clinic. She told me it has been absolutely insane, the likes of which she has never seen before. She gets no breaks, no lunch/dinner and can’t keep up with the inflow of patients. They are short staffed and calling her in to pickup extra shifts on the daily. The calls come in at 6:30 AM. The medical care crisis is real from what I can see.

crappie55369 wrote:

i dont see how a post like this can be counted on to produce facts and truth. Most people have a pre-determined opinion about what is causing the problems.

i read through all the posts. i think i counted one post from someone giving a first hand account of the situation? Every other post is a “i heard this”….

I use information from posts like this to make determinations too but i dont see a lot of first hand accounts written about here.

Carry On

Where are we carrying on. The one common denominator I see in your posts, are they are mostly pointless and tend to stir the pot and walk away.
I guess I don’t get it. I always respect your opinions but I never quite understand your meaning. I know you have a horse that’s really high up there. But man, they make throw ropes to swing down.

Carry on.

I will also add, pre-covid, it was rare to have patients hospitalized for more than a week or two. These were either complex trauma patients or medically complex that required prolonged stays. Covid patients take up hospital beds and often icu beds for weeks at a time if not months. Normal patients can require icu care but would improve and transfer out. Now Covid patients just linger and linger without improvement. So one Covid patient can occupy an icu bed that could have otherwise provided care to multiple icu patients prior to this.

Please get vaccinated.

Bearcat89 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>crappie55369 wrote:</div>
i dont see how a post like this can be counted on to produce facts and truth. Most people have a pre-determined opinion about what is causing the problems.

i read through all the posts. i think i counted one post from someone giving a first hand account of the situation? Every other post is a “i heard this”….

I use information from posts like this to make determinations too but i dont see a lot of first hand accounts written about here.

Carry On

Where are we carrying on. The one common denominator I see in your posts, are they are mostly pointless and tend to stir the pot and walk away.
I guess I don’t get it. I always respect your opinions but I never quite understand your meaning. I know you have a horse that’s really high up there. But man, they make throw ropes to swing down.

Carry on.

I dont disagree with you. I can’t see a lot of value in most of my posts either. I’m not really sure that makes me unique in this forum but I can certainly see where my comments would irritate people. My goal is not to stir the pot but I am often critical of people. Again i dont see how that differentiates me from many people on this forum

The better approach would be for me to say nothing at all. Some days I’m good at that and some days I’m not

As to the point in this most recent post I thought that was clear. The OP is seeking truth through responses in this post. I pointed out that I didn’t think he would accomplish this and why. Evidently he agrees with me as he responded saying he was just thinking the same thing.

It’s easy to sound like a dip**** on the internet. I think most of us on this forum would get along just fine in person regardless of how we respond to things online.

Old man had a heart attack recently and was hopped around the cities for 24 hours just to find an open bed. From my friends who are RN’s and PA’s, those most likely taking the beds are the morbidly obese and unvaxxed. I am now pretty irrational when it comes to my opinion on the fat and unvaxxed.