Hello! I think I already mentioned that I’m working in a 25-bed community ER, but here are some of the details. There are no walls between patient care areas, just curtains, so that makes isolation very hard. There are about 7 fast track rooms/ortho rooms that are walled off and contained. Two of these rooms have negative airflow. That means air can be cycled in the room and cycled out without spreading to the outside.

What has been happening with the surge of COVID-19 patients is that many of them are placed in “personal tents” i.e. plastic vestibules, kind of like saran wrap. If the measures seem ineffective or impractical, well that’s because they kind of are. The army is helping the hospital and has a tent setup outside for surge moments when people are placed in the plastic vestibules and the transported in to the hospital if needed. So when the Allen hospital was seeing its surge of patients the ER of 25 beds was housing 100 patients. In that type of saturated environment it is very, very hard not to be exposed. That’s why hand washing is still your best bet to not stay infected. Also things like stress, your diet, level of fitness, and personal medical conditions can be the determining factor on whether you develop the horrific respiratory symptoms that have been so devastating. Even if you do not develop COVID-19 symptoms, more accurately known as SARS COV-2, you can still carry and spread the virus. Obviously, this has been known for quite a while, but it explains why people are afraid to go to the hospital. If you went to the hospital during the COVID-19 surge and you didn’t have it, then you were just about guaranteed to get it while you were there.

Anyway, I just had to explain the above to set the table, so to speak, for my experiences in the ER so far. Basically, I got to the ER after the surge. I have not been in the thick of the tremendous challenges that were experienced in March. More people are being tested, treated, and quarantined outside the hospital setting and frankly, as morbid as it sounds, the people most susceptible to COVID-19 have already passed away.

So, for me, I am just taking care of a few people a day. We still have people coming in who are positive for COVID-19, but nowhere near the numbers of a month ago.

Now, another traveler in Brooklyn told me that they are still having a significant number of patients who expire on a daily basis, but most of those cases must be happening on medical floors and not in the ER as far as I can tell.

Okay, I hope my insights have brought you some understanding of the situation and I will have more going forward. Here are some photos of my hospital. The other travel nurses have been great and the local staff also grst as well. Many local staff are still out sick so schedules are a bit disrupted and traveling nurses are definitely filling holes and providing relief!

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