Medical teams from the National Guard are assisting staff at the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, as there is a severe shortage of workers due to the ongoing coronavirus epidemic and wildlife, hospital officials confirmed Thursday.
The deployment of National Guard health care workers at Sonoma County’s largest hospital has also come amid a Covid-19 outbreak among Memorial Hospital staff that was unveiled this week. Although the outbreak, which began in early August, has wiped out the hospital’s nearly 2,000,000-strong team, hospital officials have argued that the two issues are not related.
“This is a resource that is given to all hospitals in California,” Christian Hill, a spokeswoman for the hospital, said of the guard members. “Our decision to use this resource (Memorial Hospital) is not linked to the carer (coronavirus).”
The National Guard teams working at the memorial include nurse leaders who manage emergency medical technicians in various units throughout the hospital, Hill said. He did not disclose how many guard members are working at the hospital.
Guard members are also helping with simple duties such as transporting patients and taking their vital signals, according to staff who made the anonymous request from hospital leaders for fear of repetition.
Despite the epidemic and the Wildland Blaze, the county’s other two major medical centers – Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital – do not require the National Guard to stimulate their respective operations, a hospital spokesman said.
On Monday, Memorial Hospital officials said 17 employees working in the “1 Center” unit, which is a general surgery area, had been infected by Kovid-19. The next day, hospital officials confirmed that the first cases of the virus among employees appeared early last month, 29 weeks before the hospital’s CEO sent a bulletin on August 29 to warn the entire organization of the epidemic.
So far, memorial officials have declined to say whether more workers tested positive for the coronavirus, and if they had, to certify the extent of the outbreak.
Other hospital staffers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the virus had actually infected workers in other areas of the 300-bed hospital in addition to normal surgery.
Hill said the memorial almost “completes the virus testing of all at-risk group employees.”
“The total number of carers who test positive is less than 1% of our current employees (2017),” he said.
Aug Gust. On the 23rd, the Memorial’s CEO, and Chief Nursing ler Fisher, Tyler Hayden, announced in an internal memorandum that efforts were underway to recruit more staff in response to the “incredible difficulty” of employees, according to the length of our response. Covid-19, and now the harsh reality of the beginning of the fire season. “
They noted in the memo that the epidemic and associated travel restrictions, as well as years of wildfires, have made it more difficult to hire traveling nurses due to the shortage of housing in the area.
To help offset the difficult situation, Memorial leaders implemented the hospital’s emergency management system protocol and requested additional staff resources from the Sonoma County Medical Health Operational Operations Area Coordinator. The request was followed by the assignment of National Guard nurses and technicians under the authority of the California Department of Public Health.
The hospital’s chief executive and chief nursing officer did not mention the organisation’s virus outbreak in staff in a memo dated August 23.
Tammera Campbell, a radiologic technologist in the memorial’s imaging department, said his unit was “strictly short-sighted.”
Campbell, who is on the bargaining team of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, said many additional protocols, procedures and precautions are needed as a result of the epidemic.
“Everything takes more time with Covid,” he said, adding that the hospital’s foot traffic patterns have also changed as some staff are unable to advance in the field of general surgery due to an outbreak of infectious disease there.
Campbell said the outbreak among colleagues, the ongoing epidemic in addition to staff shortages have put great strain on hospital staff, and many are worried about the spread of the virus.
“I came home today. I showered and washed my hair before I kissed my husband. “It simply came to our notice then. We are taking risks every day even when we do in safe circumstances. “
Late Wednesday, Sonoma County health officials reported six more deaths related to Covid-1, bringing the death toll from the epidemic to 89.
All six victims – four women and two men – were over 64 years old, in poor health and died. He died between 1 and 300 August.
County health officials declined to release demographic information and other details about the deceased residents, citing federal privacy laws surrounding health care.
Of the 89 county deaths caused by coronavirus, 73 have been residents of senior care homes. That share, more than 80%, has been constant throughout the summer in local nursing homes, assisted living centers and board and care homes.
You can reach staff writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or [email protected]. Pressreno on Twitter.
