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Up to 400 percent compared to October
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The ER doctor: we expect a peak at Christmas
It is not just healthcare facilities that bear witness to a more difficult situation in healthcare.
Emergency doctors and ambulances are being forced to make more and more calls about cases related to covid-19.
– It’s similar to the situation this spring, says Dan Gryth, chief physician.
Your alarm rarely goes silent for more than a few minutes at a time. We have to sue three times to finish the short interview of all incoming cases this Sunday.
In the end, you still have a few minutes left.
The load is hard. Aside from all the “ordinary” events that emergency physicians go to, such as knife cuts, cardiac arrest, and young children putting things down their throats, he and his colleagues also receive countless COVID-19 related cases.
– Week 43, we and the ambulances had 260 alarms of this type in one week. Week 48 was the corresponding figure of 1,374, says Dan Gryth, medical manager for emergency medical vehicles in Stockholm.
Most of the calls are about evaluations of whether the patient should go to the emergency room or not. Sometimes it is about acute breathing difficulties.
– What we are seeing is the respiratory rate and the difficulty that the person has to breathe. We also usually do the so-called smallpox test: let the patient walk 20 meters to see how the lungs work. It is difficult to hear with a stethoscope how sick someone with covid-19 is. The lungs sound almost completely normal, he says.
Photo: LOTTE FERNVALL
Dan Gryth, Medical Director of Emergency Medical Vehicles in Stockholm.
The victims are of all ages.
– It’s a great mix, definitely not just older. It was pretty quiet this summer, but now the falls have risen sharply, by several hundred percent in just one month.
– We hope it will continue to increase for a few more weeks, until Christmas. So we wait for it to flatten out. But these are pure guesses, he says.
As an emergency physician, he cares more about the medical staff in intensive care units than himself. Their role is primarily to support the ambulance units on site. Sometimes he accompanies patients to the hospital, but then others take over.
Photo: LOTTE FERNVALL
Dan Gryth, chief physician and medical director of the Stockholm Emergency Medical Vehicles.
See in hospitals how the situation becomes increasingly tense. Although there are fewer intensive care patients than in the spring, the staff in the healthcare sector is also smaller.
– There is capacity to expand the VAT, but now we have fewer nurses. That makes it just as heavy. I am worried about them, because they will be strong, he says.
– They work four-hour shifts, rest, and then drive four hours again. In protective clothing. It is tedious.
She sincerely hopes that more people will think about the distance as the holiday shopping begins.
– Yes, people really keep their distance.
Take a gingerbread man, the photographer takes a picture. Then the alarm sounds again.
– I have to go. They have a patient they need help with.
He and his colleague disappear into the mist again with the blue lights on.
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