Colorado†reactivated†the Crisis Standards of Care on Nov. 9 as a response to increased workloads because hospitals are working at capacity, and staff burnout and resignations are making working conditions difficult. Often, hospitals are turning to treatment plans outside the scope of conventional care, according to the Colorado.gov website.Dr. Michael Roshon, emergency physician at Penrose-St. Francis Health Services, said the reason for staff shortages is complex. ìThe challenges in the hospital and the high acuity settings are real; the burnout and exhaustion is real, which has contributed to the shortages,î Roshon said. The health care staff is exhausted and leaving the industry at the same time that hospital volumes are higher than they have ever been, he said. ìItís just a high turnover kind of career anyway, and COVID-19 has made it worse,î he said.The crisis standard of care allows hospitals flexibility to move people around to do other tasks than what they would normally do, while still keeping everything safe, Roshon said. ìIt sounds ominous, but in reality it gives the hospital the ability to move people where needed, while keeping the quality of care high,î Roshon said.He said he thinks part of the reason nurses and other health care workers are dropping out is because of total burnout from watching people get sick and not having many options to help them. ìWe know the vaccines and booster help prevent severe disease, plus it seems to be working really well at keeping people out of the hospital; and thatís what we need,î Roshon said. ìIt wears on all of us; at some point you think, you know, maybe, Iíll just go and be a barista.îCentura Health had few people leave their jobs in relation to the vaccination mandate, he said. ìMost people see the importance of getting the vaccine,î he said.Hospitals are still a safe place to go; they have all the protocols in place to keep the patients and staff safe, Roshon said. ìAs sad as it is to see people get admitted to the hospital with COVID, itís equally sad to see people ignore their heart attack symptoms for example, and come in too late because they were afraid to go to the hospital,î he said. ìWhatís driving us crazy right now is the uncertainty of whether weíre going to get a big bump after Christmas. If we get like a 30% bump, we will be in trouble.îRecently, Peak Vista Community Health Center pulled out of their Falcon location. Robert Nartker, chief operating officer, said in an email that like many health care organizations and businesses across Colorado and the United States, Peak Vista is also facing staffing shortages. ìWe want to make sure that each patient receives the care they deserve. And after reviewing our options, we determined that a temporary suspension of services at the Falcon Peak Health Center would help us continue to deliver the level of care our patients expect,î Nartker said.Peak Vista is working to ensure they have appropriate staffing by consolidating services, implementing aggressive hiring initiatives and using temporary staffing agencies to support all open positions, especially those providing direct patient care, he said. Patients can tap into the more than 27 centers throughout the region to address health care needs instead of putting them off, he said.Tamera Dunseth Rosenbaum, chief nursing officer at UCHealth Memorial, said they are experiencing their third surge since the onset of COVID-19. She said the latest surge is different because of the overall capacity constraints of the hospital, record volumes in the ER departments; and, besides locals, people from other communities, as far away as Trinidad, Colorado, are being admitted.The teams are experiencing significant burnout and exhaustion, Dunseth Rosenbaum said. Nurses are leaving and some are resigning to become a traveling nurse, where the salaries are almost double or triple what they make as a full-time nurse. However, she said the vast majority are leaving because of burnout and experiencing so much death. ìIíve never seen patients as sick as what we have in the hospital now in my whole career of almost 30 years,î Dunseth Rosenbaum said.They are losing experienced nurses, who are deciding to retire early, and new nurses are not prepared to witness so much death. One nurse reported two to three patients are dying every day.ìThe toll that takes on all health care staff is pretty overwhelming,î Dunseth Rosenbaum said.Staffing shortages, at least for UCHealth, are not related to the vaccine mandate. The Colorado Springs South Region saw 32 employees out of 6,000 leave because of the mandate; the entire organization reported fewer than 200 employees leave out of 27,000, she said.To deal with the shortages, they adjusted pay practices to be competitive, offered bonuses for staff to pick up extra shifts, cancelled elective surgeries and turned single rooms into double occupancy rooms, Dunseth Rosenbaum said. They also hire traveling nurses when they can find them, and work with the military hospitals to transfer Tricare patients to them, as appropriate.A large percentage of the testing sites are finding the Omicron variant; it is highly contagious, and health care workers are concerned about what will happen to the people who arenít vaccinated after the holidays and through March, Dunseth Rosenbaum said.She said 85% of patients in a regular UCHealth hospital bed are not vaccinated; 90% of ICU patients are not vaccinated and 93% of ventilated patients are not vaccinated. ìWe know that vaccinations are our ticket out of this pandemic and to get back to normal operations in the hospital,î Dunseth Rosenbaum said. ìThe main thing we need from our community is to get vaccinated. I donít know how much more our teams can withstand as theyíre already exhausted.î
