Inside Sinai-Grace 'war zone': 'We started to run out of body bags."
Detroit — Medical workers at Detroit Medical Center's Sinai-Grace paint a grim picture of the hospital's emergency department these past weeks as they scrambled to care for coronavirus patients: patients dying in hallways and nurses searching for body bags and places to put the dead.
"Walking into work last Thursday, it was a war zone, there were patients lying everywhere," said Jeff Eichenlaub, a weekend day-shift emergency room nurse for the past six years.
Accounts of conditions inside the for-profit hospital were given to The Detroit News by five nurses and doctors — some of whom requested anonymity after a nurse was fired for posting on social media last month — as their reports suggest Sinai-Grace is among the hardest-hit hospitals by Detroit's surge of COVID-19 patients.
About five patients die from the virus each 12-hour shift, and there aren't always enough body bags or refrigerators to accommodate them, said Eichenlaub of Troy.
"All three coolers are filled, the morgue and the viewing room next to the morgue are full and right now, we're taking bodies to the sleep lab to store them," he said. "We initially had to double bag each patient, but we started to run out of body bags and began scrambling floor-to-floor to find places to take them."
Eichenlaub said workers held a sit-in on April 2 and told administrators "there are only 10 day-shift nurses, and we need more people."
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2020/04/09/inside-detroit-hospital-sinai-grace-war-zone/5122651002/
