'We're leaving the hospital sometimes in tears': Arizona doctors worry as ICUs fill
ABC News Radio | June 30, 2020
By DR. MARK ABDELMALEK, OLIVIA RUBIN, KAYLEE HARTUNG and ROBERT ZEPEDA, ABC News
(PHOENIX) — Hospitals in Arizona are seeing an intense wave of new coronavirus cases, doctors at the Banner University Medical Center in Phoenix told ABC News on Monday, and it is filling up their intensive care units and pushing their nurses to the brink.
Dr. Jennifer O’Hea, a Banner ICU doctor overseeing 100 patients, said the situation “exploded” towards the end of May and has snowballed into a dire situation.”Never, never, ever have I seen this many patients in our ICU,” O’Hea, who has worked at the hospital for 22 years, said. “We were using ICUs that we’ve never used before. Rooms that were vacant we’re now using as ICUs.”
Dr. Marjorie Bessel, the chief clinical officer for the Banner Health System, told ABC News she has “been concerned for weeks.”
... Patients are dying, patients are suffering, they’re on ventilators for weeks. Families cannot be here,” O’Hea said. “There are patients begging me not to put them on a breathing machine because they know that they might die, they might never talk to their families again.”
Still, the hospital is participating in a state-run surge plan that sees patients transferred in helicopters and ambulances from one hospital to another when capacity is full. As of today, just two of Banner’s 17 Arizona hospitals can accept patients from the surge line because of capacity issues relating to bed availability and staffing — an indicator of just how strained the system truly is.
http://sandhillsexpress.com/abc_health/wersquore-leaving-the-hospital-sometimes-in-tears-arizona-doctors-worry-as-icus-fill-abcid36294377/
Good God.
= new reply since forum marked as read
We've seen all of that under the Trump administration. Hell we've seen all four since Coronavirus began. We're in the suffering phase and we may be suffering for a very long time. 
