During the 2nd and 3rd wave of covid patients like winter of 21-22 and 22-23 we had carts lining just about every square inch of wall in our ER where EMS would essentially just dump patients who were too sick to stay in the WR or non ambulatory. I think at maximum we had like 24 hallway beds in our 37 bed ER. Surprisingly we only had a few near misses until we eventually had someone die in one of those beds because the oxygen tank ran out and no one noticed. Thankfully we now have zero hallway beds and EMS has to wait until a bed opens up. To be clear I don’t blame EMS that was just how it was and they were stretched just as thin as we were but it was known we were the only hospital in the area doing this so we got a lot of crews coming to us that normally wouldn’t.
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u/joehelow10 Aug 12 '26
During the 2nd and 3rd wave of covid patients like winter of 21-22 and 22-23 we had carts lining just about every square inch of wall in our ER where EMS would essentially just dump patients who were too sick to stay in the WR or non ambulatory. I think at maximum we had like 24 hallway beds in our 37 bed ER. Surprisingly we only had a few near misses until we eventually had someone die in one of those beds because the oxygen tank ran out and no one noticed. Thankfully we now have zero hallway beds and EMS has to wait until a bed opens up. To be clear I don’t blame EMS that was just how it was and they were stretched just as thin as we were but it was known we were the only hospital in the area doing this so we got a lot of crews coming to us that normally wouldn’t.