Hospitals Face Staff Shortages as Coronavirus Hammers North Carolina
Staff shortages more of a danger than
Erin Holzhauer, medical director of the Samaritan’s Purse Covid-19 field hospital in Western North Carolina, has also worked as a nurse in a similar field hospital in the city of Cremona in northern Italy this last spring. The team there treated 281 patients from March 20 to May 8. (Photo courtesy of Samaritan’s Purse)
North Carolina’s hospitals are quickly filling up with patients stricken by the coronavirus, even as health systems in some of the hardest-hit regions the Triad and greater Charlotte area take steps to make room for a wave of new patients. The looming crisis is fueled by lack of clinical staff, not by a lack of physical space for beds.
Thursday morning, staff members of the Samaritanâs Purse emergency field hospital in Lenoir donned their protective equipment and entered the hot zone  â where COVID-19 patients are treated â for the first time.
The very first patients of the field hospital were transferred from Caldwell UNC Health Care hospital on Thursday. The hospital, made up of several large, white tents, is set up in UNC Caldwellâs parking lot. It took about a week and a half for it to be planned, organized, built and opened, UNC Caldwell CEO Laura Easton said.
On Dec. 23, the field hospital was just a vague idea, Easton said. She wondered if Samaritanâs Purse, which has provided aid for the COVID-19 crisis around the world, would consider setting up an emergency hospital in Lenoir, just down the mountain from the organizationâs headquarters in Boone.
Thursday morning, staff members of the Samaritan’s Purse emergency field hospital in Lenoir donned their protective equipment and entered the "hot zone" — where COVID-19 patients are treated — for
WFAE
A hospital bed sits in one of the tarp-enclosed rooms at North Carolina s field hospital in Lenoir. Each room will also have a heart monitor and other medical equipment.
North Carolina’s hospitals are quickly filling up with patients stricken by the coronavirus, even as health systems in some of the hardest-hit regions the Triad and greater Charlotte area take steps to make room for a wave of new patients.
The looming crisis is fueled by lack of clinical staff, not by lack of physical space for beds.
Health care workforce shortages have been chronic and persistent in some areas of the state, particularly rural ones. But with virtually every hospital in the state drawing on a finite pool of available providers, more than 4,000 North Carolina hospital beds are either unstaffed or were not reported to the state, data from the Department of Health and Human Services shows. COVID-19 infections in health care workers have also compounded the shortage.
A new field hospital in Lenoir will start accepting COVID-19 patients on Wednesday.
It was difficult to find a quiet spot Tuesday afternoon in the paved lot next to Caldwell UNC Health Care in Lenoir as dozens of people rushed to meet a deadline.
A man in a blue surgical mask sawed two-by-fours. A woman wheeled two computer carts wrapped in plastic. In the middle of all of the action stood 11 white plastic tents. Melissa Strickland pulled open the flap on one of the tents and stepped inside the state’s first COVID-19 field hospital.
“You can see they’re just setting up this ward and putting all of the equipment in place,” Strickland, a spokesperson for Samaritan’s Purse, said. The Boone-based international disaster relief organization is managing the field hospital which plans to start accepting patients on Wednesday.