COVID-19 continues to alter the lives of millions of families across the country. A recent report from ABC News indicated that coronavirus related hospitalizations have climbed over 67,000 as the nation endures a winter surge of the virus. The recent surge in hospitalizations has left medical units scrambling for hospital beds yet again as the holidays near.
“I don’t want anyone else’s family member or loved one to have to be in the position where we say, like, we can’t help you because we don’t have the resources,” Rebecca Long of the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha told ABC News.
“As health care providers, all we want to do is help people and we can’t because we physically can’t.”
Long is not the only medical care provider to express such feelings. While speaking to ABC News, Dr. Kyle McCarty of HSHS St. Vincent Hospital said that nurses and doctors are “being asked to do more with less” as resources run dry.
“We’re exhausted by the knowledge that we are the duct tape that is preventing a complete collapse of the health care system,” McCarty said.
“There’s a national shortage of hospital staff, which is making it difficult to take care of patients the way that we want it. There aren’t enough inpatient beds for the patients that need to be admitted to the hospital.”
