"Tridemic" overwhelming frontline health care workers in Boston
BOSTON - Flu numbers are higher than they have been in years, RSV cases remain high and wastewater tests show COVID-19 numbers are also spiking. This virus trifecta is taking a toll on nurses at local hospitals and the patients who need their care.
Brigham and Women's Hospital labor and delivery nurse, Kelly Morgan, says there is only one thing that will help. "Hire more nurses," she said.
It's no secret that hospitals have been experiencing staffing shortages because many nurses left the profession during the pandemic. On top of that, nurses are now getting sick, even in areas like labor and delivery where Morgan works. "More nurses at bedside [are] getting COVID and flu over the past month or so than we have seen in a while," she said.
The I-Team reached out to Mass General Brigham and in a statement a spokesperson told us they have been hiring:
"In the past year, we have hired over 550 nurses, decreasing our nursing vacancy rate from 10 percent to 5.5 percent. We continue to augment nurse staffing with approximately 260 traveling nurses. At the Brigham, we remain focused on supporting our staff and providing high quality care to all our patients amid capacity constraints and growing numbers of patients in need of care."
According to Morgan, no area has been hit harder than the Emergency Department. "Last week there were over 60 boarders, patients waiting for beds in the emergency room," she said adding, "[That's] not a great environment to take care of them."
When the I-Team asked about the Emergency Department boarding issue the spokesperson said:
"In terms of capacity, emergency department boarding is also a nationwide issue, resulting from capacity constraints at hospitals due to larger numbers of patients and sicker patients who are experiencing longer stays in the hospital. Exacerbating this issue are staffing challenges at rehab and skilled nursing facilities, which limits the number of patients we can discharge to these facilities when they are ready to the leave the hospital. This back up further extends hospital stays and slows our ability to admit new patients from the emergency department who need our care."
According to Morgan, adding more nurses would make more beds available. "What's happened is that we can't open every single bed because we don't have the nurses to take care of a person in every single bed, so that needs to be resolved," Morgan said.