people don't realize that hospitals can not accept patients if they have no staff so I suppose if they have limited staff they have to declare an emergency, but they won't admit that.
Exactly right. My hospital ran off our good nurses rather than pay them for their hard work during the early pandemic. The nurses went traveling and my hospital had to pay a premium for contract travelers to replace them. Why didn't they just pay our nurses better in the first place?
In the meantime we had fresh graduate contract nurses overwhelmed with the workload who sometimes would throw up their hands and quit. We became perpetually understaffed to the point that although we are a 510 bed hospital, we were at full capacity when we hit 425 patients. Why? Nobody to staff the beds
Our ED had a whole quadrant of our beds taken from us and used to house inpatients. There were times I went to that team and there was only one nurse for 15 beds. Intubated, airborne isolation covid patients were in a room with the door WIDE OPEN because there wasn't enough staff to keep a close watch on the patient. Another time we had a Baker Act covid patient in another room with the door WIDE OPEN. Two of our long time loyal and dedicated coworkers, one nurse and one HUC caught covid both had been vaccinated and died due to the bullshit stunts our money-hungry idiot administrators pulled.
And then they tell us we HAVE TO GET the jab or be fired?! Screw that! I just spent nearly 2 years caring for covid patients, often without proper PPE available and infection control measures nonexistent, and I haven't gotten covid. So, no, I won't be getting the jab, f*ck you very much. I got fired for refusing. I'm fine with that. Money is really tight for me now, but I've made my peace with that too. I refuse to live in fear. I know nowhere will hire someone my age and with my quarter century plus experience without demanding I get the jab. I will bow to no human, so it looks like my only option will be to go on social security two and a half years before I reach full retirement age.
I have been on high dose vitamin D for nearly 20 years due to a history of cancer, and I'm convinced that it is why I never got covid.
/rant:off