By Grant Schulte and Amy Forliti - The Associated Press
America's hospitals, overloaded with COVID-19 patients, are scrambling to rehire retired nurses and doctors, recruiting students and recent graduates who have not yet obtained their licenses, and offering sky-high salaries in a desperate attempt to alleviate staff shortages.
With coronavirus infections increasing from coast to coast, the number of hospitalized patients has more than doubled in the last month.
This Wednesday,
the number of Americans admitted reached the record of 100,000
, a serious milestone that puts medical centers and health workers against the wall.
"Nurses are under immense pressure right now," said Kendra McMillan, senior policy advisor for the American Nurses Association.
"We have heard from frontline nurses who say they have never experienced the level of burnout that we are seeing right now."
Governors in hardest-hit states like Wisconsin and Nebraska are facilitating the return of retired nurses, including by waiving license requirements and fees, although these flexibilities may not be completely incentivizing for
older nurses, who would face increased risk
than the rest of their colleagues, if they contracted the virus.
Emergency room nurses are the most in demand at this point in the health crisis.
AP
Some are taking jobs that don't involve working directly with patients to free up nurses on the front line, McMillan said.
Iowa is issuing temporary emergency licenses for new nurses who have met state educational requirements, but have not yet taken the state exam.
Some Minnesota hospitals offer winter internships to nursing students to augment their staff.
Internships are generally offered in the summer, but were canceled this year due to the pandemic.
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Methodist Hospital in Minneapolis will designate 25 interns for a month or two to work with COVID-19 patients, though
they won't be allowed to perform certain tasks like inserting IV needles or urinary catheters
, said Tina Kvalheim, a nurse who runs the Program.
"They will receive full support in their roles so that our patients receive the best and safe care possible," Kvalheim said.
Bring recent graduates into the workforce
Landon Brown, 21, of Des Moines, Iowa, is a senior nursing student at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Brown recently accepted an internship at the Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato and was assigned to the medical-surgical area of the pediatric unit, but said he may have to treat coronavirus patients.
Landon Brown, a nursing student in Minnesota.AP
Brown's determination to help these patients as a nurse was asserted after his 90-year-old grandfather contracted the virus and died over the weekend.
“The staff I had was great and they really took a lot of pressure off my parents and my family,” he said.
"I think if I can do that role for another family, it would be great."
The University of Iowa College of Nursing is also trying to quickly get graduates into the workforce.
The College worked to accelerate students' grades toward the Iowa Board of Nursing so that they could become licensed before graduation, said Anita Nicholson, associate dean for undergraduate programs.
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Nicholson said the university also scheduled internships for seniors earlier than normal and created a program that
allows students to gain hospital experience under the supervision
of a nurse.
Those students do not care for coronavirus patients, but their work frees up nurses for them to do so, Nicholson said.
"The sooner we can put our graduates on the job market, the better," he said.
$ 6,200 weekly per nurse
Aspirus Health Care, based in Wausau, Wisconsin, offers bonuses of up to $ 15,000 for nurses with one year of experience.
Hospitals are also turning to nurses who travel from one state to another.
But this variant is expensive, because hospitals across the country are competing for it, pushing wages up to $ 6,200 a week, according to job postings for traveling nurses.
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April Hansen, executive vice president of San Diego-based Aya Healthcare, said there are currently 31,000 openings for traveling nurses, more than double the number that was sought when the pandemic began in the spring.
"It's crazy," Hansen said.
"It doesn't matter if you are rural or urban, if you are an indigenous health center or an academic medical center or anything else ... All the facilities are experiencing higher demand right now."
Nurses who work in intensive care and on medical-surgical floors are the most in demand.
Employers are also willing to pay more for nurses who can report to
work on short notice and cover 48 or 60 hours a week, instead of the usual 36.
Laura Cutolo, a 32-year-old emergency room nurse who works in an ICU in Gilbert, Arizona, began traveling as a nurse when the pandemic began, landing in New York during the deadliest moment of the outbreak in the United States last spring. .
He now works in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and will soon return to New York.
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He said he hopes his effort will serve as an example for his children, now 2 and 5, when the crisis goes down in history and one day they read about it.
"If they ask me, 'Where were you?' I can be proud of where I was and what I did," Cutolo said.
There is also a high demand for doctors.
"I don't even practice anymore and I've gotten a lot of emails asking me to travel across the country to work in emergency rooms," said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
COVID-19 spreads "like a forest fire"
The COVID-19 outbreak has left more than 270,000 deaths and 13.8 million confirmed infections in the United States.
New cases exceed 160,000 per day, on average, and deaths are up to more than 1,500 per day.
States are experiencing an unprecedented increase in deaths, including Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky, towards the center of the country.
According to Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, the virus is "spreading like wildfire."
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The COVID-19 vaccine is expected to be available in a few weeks, and healthcare workers are likely to have priority for the first doses.
That could make it easier for hospitals to recruit the help they need.
In order to make room for the sickest, the worst-hit institutions are sending home some infected patients who would otherwise have remained in hospital.
They are also canceling elective surgeries or sending adult patients without COVID-19 to pediatric hospitals.
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A hospital system in Idaho is sending some COVID-19 patients home with iPads, supplemental oxygen, blood pressure cuffs and oxygen monitors
to finish recovering in their own beds.
Devices such as tablets allow nurses to communicate with them, and oxygen monitors automatically send vital information to medical staff.
Across the United States, hospitals are converting cafeterias, waiting rooms and even parking lots into treatment areas for patients.
Some states are opening field hospitals.
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But these strategies do not solve the staff shortage, especially in rural areas where officials say many people are not taking basic precautions against the virus.
Dr. Eli Perencevich, a professor of epidemiology and internal medicine at the University of Iowa, said healthcare workers are paying the price for other people's refusal to wear masks.
"They are sending everyone to war, really," he
said.
"We have decided as a society that we are going to take all the people in our healthcare system and beat them up because we have a crazy idea of what freedom really is."