'I feel defeated' inside New Jersey hospitals overwhelmed

by Covid-19

Fri 10 Apr 2020 06.00 EDT

"Inside New Jersey intensive care units, frustrated and frightened frontline medical staff are taking on double their normal patient loads or working twice their usual hours, without the equipment they need.

From moment to moment, they face harrowing life-and-death encounters and constantly risk their own safety to help an overwhelming number of people of a variety of ages and backgrounds who are “effectively drowning on dry land” from Covid-19.

“Every single 12-hour shift I work is like nothing I’ve ever endured,” said Lynn, a nurse at Pascack Valley Medical Center in Westwood, northern New Jersey. She has worked in the field for more than three decades, and describes the current state of the ICU as “a war zone”. The patients are “sicker than I’ve ever seen”, she says. They can crash in the blink of an eye, then slip into multiple organ failure.

Like many other medical professionals across the US, she does not want her full name published. She is afraid of retaliation from the hospital where she works for speaking out on the conditions inside her unit. But she said she feels beat up from working so hard, and is alarmed by the grim outcomes for her patients.

“What you see on TV you can pretty much times by ten,” Lynn said. “And that’s exactly what’s going on.”

New York is the US state worst affected by the coronavirus outbreak so far, but its neighbour, New Jersey, is not far behind. The state had more than 51,000 cases and more than 1,700 people had died as of Thursday afternoon, a stunning toll on a population of less than 9 million people.

Coronavirus cases have been confirmed across New Jersey, but the north, where many New York city commuters live, has been particularly hard hit. That is especially true in Bergen county, which has seen the fourth-highest number of coronavirus deaths of any county in the US, according to Johns Hopkins, and is where Pascack Valley Medical Center is located."

moar:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/10/new-jersey-coronavirus-hospital-overwhelmed