Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire More "gettin' real" stuff

I work for St. Luke's Health System which has several hospitals and other health care facilities throughout SW Idaho. Saw an email today that the Wood River Medical Center in Ketchum (Sun Valley) is essentially shut down and that "the entire emergency department" has the corona virus. They are transferring some patients to our Magic Valley hospital in Twin Falls.

The website for this hospital has a front page announcement: "In support of a safe environment for our patients and caregivers, effective immediately we will be temporarily suspending normal operations at St. Luke’s Wood River. Our emergency department will remain open..." so I guess they're going to use other than their normal ED docs and nurses.

This is hitting closer to home.

Took my daughter to her retina appt at Vanderbilt children’s hospital friday.

She is categorized as a high priority appt. her surgeon knows and remembered my deal and insisted I do not come inside the building.
She also insisted the wife and daughter mask up.

Had two check points and then had to sign in and name checked off outside for verified appt. sticky tags issued with name of patient and doctor

Shewww...

My son’s long time girlfriend works in an ER, pending a couple of test results on others they expect to be putting themselves in quarantine.

One of my grandsons is an urgent care nurse in Denver. He says that they have several severely ill patients in ICU who are afflicted with the coronavirus.

For what it's worth, he assured me that they are taking every precaution....

Next two weeks are going to be telling.

Hearing of shortages of PPE in hospitals already. I know they are ramping up the supply chain across the country but we an expect to hear of more shortages for a while.

We are sending our daughter, who is a MD at a hospital in Kansas, a backup supply of PPE just in case. She tells us there are no shortages now, however I suspect when things ramp up a lot more....soon... supplies will dry up.

What we send her may be from Harbor Freight or home depot, but at least is something.

Interestingly they have prepared an entire floor of their hospital to handling JUST corona patients.

May God be with all of those on the frontline of this plague.

My wife is an RN and my daughter is a PA in two different ERs here in the Memphis area. I see it setting up where they are all going to get infected and won’t be able to work. Perhaps not because they feel bad, but because they must be quarantined 14 days. Y’all, stay home! We’re basically all going to get it. We’ve got to spread it out into a time frame our medical people can deal with! STAY HOME!

But we were assured that masks didn't do anything to protect us from the virus.

True, but the purpose of the mask is to provide a measure of protection to others from the person wearing the mask - not provide the wearer protection from others. Wearing a mask in the OP's example is to lessen the exposure of staff and patients from being exposed to the Chinese Flu by others who are infected but not showing signs and symptoms yet.

If the masks don't protect you from the virus, why do all the healthcare workers wear them? Think about it. They don't want all of us buying them up.

There’s a difference between surgical type masks and N95’s that seem to be tripping people up talking about them as if they’re the same. Surgical masks aren’t really meant to protect the wearer from others like stated. N95’s are designed to protect the wearer from others.

My youngest daughter goes back to intensive care on Thursday. She is a nurse. I’m praying for her.

What happens with that's the local power companies, or water works?

This is what i saw multiple times from credible sources. The mask is to keep the wearer from spreading germs.

What's going on with your daughter ?

Prayers !

Local hospital systems are asking anyone with sewing machines to make masks and providing material recommendations and patterns. I heard some healthcare workers are forced to wear bandannas or other home made masks because they are out of PPE. It’s only been a week of this. Grocery stores are pretty empty already.

We have two confirmed cases in our county. One of the cases lives in my neighborhood only a couple of streets over. The other attended Catholic Mass last Saturday evening and the church announced it on Friday. Basically the test were performed on Monday and the results were confirmed on Friday.

My wife is a RN at the local hospital and she specializes in “hard to stick IV” patients, pic lines, mid lines to ill patients. She and another nurse are the only ones who perform these tasks. So basically they work everywhere from the ER to ICU on any and every patient that needs assistance. To say they are more likely to be infected or exposed is an understatement. I am concerned but that is her profession and she is a very dedicated employee ( 22yrs). She returns to work in the morning.

If she becomes infected that will quarantine our entire family. Myself, three kids and possibly my mother whom I see daily. My mom has crones and is 76 yrs old. I’ve been in my restaurant daily working with my managers and employees trying to maintain as many sales as possible. We are only able to serve carry out only because of state mandates. What is disturbing is someone can have the virus and possibly infect someone and no one would know until a week later.


Prayers for all!

A mask will do nothing to protect the wearer?? Really ??

To say that is sorely lame. If one wears the correct type of mask it. indeed, will help protect one from the transmission of virus from via the breath and spittle of those infected.. Period.

One of our large "for-profit" hospital chains, HCA, here in Utah has continued to do "elective" surgical cases in it's ORs for the last week despite the University of Utah system and another "non-profit" system, IHC, voluntarily shutting those cases down in their facilities to preserve staff and supplies for bigger things. Some surgicenters have stayed open as well.

The "non-profit" chain mentioned is the "1000 lb. Gorilla" in our State and somehow manages to hide behind their "non-profit" status making real competition difficult for other "outsiders." They even had enough extra $ recently to get into the sports "sponsoring" business paying the Raiders in Las Vegas to put their name on a Raiders facility locally (they happen to be expanding into the LV market BTW!)

In this case however, IHC did the right thing which really suprised me. HCA, who I usually root for, did not. We now have our first Corona related death in Utah... in a HCA facility.

Health care and big business are not a match made in heaven, for many reasons we may soon see (hopefully not in heaven though)...

St Luke's in Sun Valley is another story. Had two former Med School colleagues who worked up there until a couple of years ago. "Entitled" town and arrogant health system administrators. They gutted the place in terms of personel and destroyed morale according to my colleagues. Sounded like it used to be a real nice place to work.

This is where not being specific is the problem. A surgical mask or even bandana will provide some degree of protection for the wearer but that’s not what they are designed for. If people are putting those on thinking that it will protect them the way a N95 or 100 will is foolish. If a surgical mask is all I’m left with at work because of a shortage I’ll gladly wear it, but I’ll wish I had a N95 or 100.