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Chicago nurses joined colleagues across the country Thursday to protest against working conditions that they say have rapidly deteriorated as hordes of Covid-19 patients push hospitals to the limit. Scott Mechanic, 36, an emergency room nurse at the University of Chicago Medical Center, said the problems stem from widespread labor shortages throughout the health-care system and hospital leadership who are reluctant to provide assistance. “We don’t have food service people … we don’t have supply chain people to deliver our most critical supplies, we don’t have people to repair our equipment,” Mechanic said. “But every job that doesn’t get done by somebody else ends up falling to the bedside nurse. We’re overwhelmed.” (Muller, 1/13)

Early in the pandemic, nurses were celebrated as heroes, with nightly symphonies of clapping or banging pots and pans. Now, many are being asked to go into work despite positive Covid tests — or they say they are being told they must use their vacation and sick days to stay home when they contract the coronavirus. “You’re talking about a group of people who sat at bedsides — not one a night, multiple, because we were consistently losing people. We were holding the iPads as people said their last goodbyes,” said Ana Bergeron, a registered nurse who is the president of a local union affiliate. “I can’t tell you how sick it makes me now being called a hero, because that’s not how we’re being treated by our employers.”​​ (Kaplan and Garcia-Hodges, 1/13)

Twenty-two months into the pandemic, health care workers are dealing with record hospitalizations, unsustainable work schedules and abuse from a public that’s frustrated and exhausted. On top of all that, they’re also contracting the virus at higher rates than ever before, federal safety standards surrounding COVID-related working conditions in hospitals have been peeled back, and changes in workers’ compensation policies are making it harder for many who cannot work. “We have had record numbers of staff members that have been out with COVID,” said Yale New Haven Health CEO Marna Borgstrom. (Golvala, 1/14)

It is the state’s biggest hospital, with a name that suggests how important it is to the health care system here: Rhode Island Hospital. And it is in crisis right now. Sick and injured patients line the emergency department hallways in stretchers, begging for help that doesn’t always come right away. Frustration in the waiting room is so high that assaults have been reported. From ambulance triage to the intensive care units, nursing is short, but so are supplies, everything from needles to medicines to bedside urinals. Nurses sit in their cars after work and wonder, did I do everything I can today? Everyone’s burned out, and nobody knows where or when this all ends. (Amaral, 1/13)

Susan Paulsen started having chest pain on Monday. The 60-year-old painter who lives in Chapel Hill waited four hours, thinking it was indigestion, hoping it would go away. Besides, she didn’t want to go near a hospital. “That seemed like a place I might catch it,” Paulsen said, referring to the Omicron variant of COVID-19 that’s been ripping through North Carolina’s population. Omicron has driven up the daily numbers of North Carolinians testing positive for the coronavirus. Since Jan. 1, the state has recorded at least 288,000 cases and had days of record-breaking case counts. (Hoban, 1/14)

Two dozen members of the West Virginia National Guard are being sent to support hospital staffing efforts as COVID-19 continues to ravage the state. The National Guard said Thursday on Twitter that 25 members will assist operations at Charleston Area Medical Center next week. (1/14)

Hospitals in York and Scranton that are experiencing a record number of new cases are getting a hand from the Pennsylvania National Guard. The National Guard members are not medical professionals, but they have been able to take on many nonmedical responsibilities to free up nurses and doctors to care for patients. They sit with patients who need close supervision so help can be quickly summoned if needed, greeting patients, restocking supplies, distributing meal trays, and escorting patients during room changes. (Gantz, 1/13)

As Covid-19 hospitalizations reach new highs, more states and health care systems are cutting back services and relying on National Guard members to fill gaps in staffing. The surge from the Omicron variant, which was first detected in the US just over six weeks ago, has left frontline workers in the medical industry and others at higher risk for exposure. As health care employees need time off to isolate and recuperate, the need to treat those with Covid-19 remains. In Washington state, Gov. Jay Inslee said Thursday that hospitals will temporarily halt non-urgent procedures "so as much capacity and staff can be dedicated to emergent needs, the people who need this right now." (Caldwell, 1/14)