Idaho hospitals nearly buckling in virus surge
(3 Sep 2021) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4342463 At Saint Luke's Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho, intensive care unit beds are full of unvaccinated coronavirus patients and doctors are bracing themselves to carry out crisis standards of care, allotting scarce life-saving resources to the patients most likely to survive. The view in every direction is heartbreaking: In one room, a pregnant woman in her second trimester relies on an artificial breathing machine. Down the hall, a nurse cries as she recounts the waves of anger and grief that fill her days. Idaho hit a grim COVID-19 trifecta this week, reaching record numbers of emergency room visits, hospitalizations and intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Medical experts say the deeply conservative state will likely see 30,000 new infections a week by mid-September. With a critical shortage of hospital beds and staff and one of the nation's lowest vaccination rates, Idaho health providers are growing desperate and preparing to follow crisis standards of care, which call for giving scarce resources to patients most likely to survive. St. Luke's Boise Medical Center invited The Associated Press into its restricted ICUs this week in hopes that sharing the dire reality would prompt people to change their behavior. "There are no vaccinated COVID critically ill patients in these units," said James Souza, chief medical officer, during a tour of the full floors. While the hospital beds are at capacity, nurses on the floor at times feel overwhelmed with a mixture of emotions. "Like I get furious pretty fast because where we are right now, we didn't have to do this," said ICU nurse Kristen Connelly. "Where we are right now is avoidable. We didn't have to go here." Inside the ICUs, Connelly and fellow nurses frequently gather to turn over each patient, careful to avoid disconnecting the tangle of tubes and wires keeping them alive. With breathing tubes, feeding tubes and half a dozen hanging bags of medications intended to halt a cascade of organ damage, turning a patient is a dangerous but necessary endeavor that happens twice a day. When Idaho’s hospitals were nearly overwhelmed with coronavirus patients last winter, Connelly wasn’t fazed, believing she could make a difference. Now, instead of focusing on one patient at a time, she cares for multiple. Many colleagues have quit, burned out by the relentless demands of the pandemic. Republican Gov. Brad Little urged residents this week to show love for their neighbors by getting vaccinated and announced he was using federal programs and mobilizing the Idaho National Guard to bring in hundreds of additional health care workers. In response, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin called it "shameful." McGeachin, who is running against Little in the Republican gubernatorial primary and has tried to bar schools and cities from from enacting mask rules, said people should make their "own health choices." The rift exists at the local level, too. Ada County commissioners voted 2-1 to nominate a local pathologist to the regional public health board who has referred to the coronavirus vaccine as "needle rape" and the "clot shot." Dr. Ryan Cole's appointment still depends on votes of other county leaders. "All of our COVID patients are unvaccinated that I've taken care of and it's just- it's so disheartening that these families are so sad," said St. Luke's ICU nurse Carly Lange. "They all ask 'what could I have done? Will the vaccine save them now?' No. But you could have done that before." Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: / ap_archive Facebook: / aparchives Instagram: / apnews You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...
