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Welcome to the ER. Here’s some hand sanitizer – and a mask.
That’s been the routine at local hospitals for the past several weeks as the H1N1 flu has spread through communities. Even as local emergency rooms reported a slowdown in H1N1-related visits this week, hospital staff say the adaptations they’ve made for the swine flu outbreak will help them if – or when – another wave hits.
Chaketa McClendon and her 2-year-old son were among a trickle of patients in Parkview Hospital’s Randallia Drive emergency room Thursday morning.
Three months pregnant, McClendon is in a high-risk category, so when she and her son began feeling flu-like symptoms, she figured she shouldn’t try to ride it out.
“He was real warm,” she said, rubbing son Diontrel Burrell’s tiny back. Diontrel stared ahead with the glassy-eyed look of a toddler who just wants to sleep.
Diontrel had been diagnosed with the flu, but McClendon was told she only had a cold, she said, gathering her things to take her son home and put him to bed.
A woman stood sentry inside the Parkview doorway Thursday morning, a bottle of hand sanitizing foam in hand. She sprayed the foam on the hands of any passer-by who let her.
As soon as patients checked in, Parkview handed those experiencing flu-like symptoms masks and shuffled them to a cordoned-off area. Thursday morning, it was empty – a welcome respite for hospital staff.
The day before was one of the slowest in weeks, Parkview spokesman John Perlich said. Parkview Health System’s two emergency rooms were seeing a 20 percent increase in the number of patients with flu-like illness in mid-October.
Dr. Tom Gutwein, medical director of Parkview’s emergency department, suspects the lull won’t last. Over the next two or three weeks, patients with chronic medical conditions might develop secondary illnesses brought on by H1N1, he said.
In addition, hospitals usually see another wave of seasonal flu between December and April. For that reason, Parkview will keep a close eye on its staff for signs of stress, Gutwein said.
“They’ve been doing incredibly well,” he said. “The longer this lasts, the harder it’s going to wear on them.”
“Emergency room” in most large hospitals is really a misnomer, as both Parkview and Lutheran have large networks of rooms in their emergency departments. Parkview turned an outpatient care area into a flu clinic, with hallways on several sides used as overflow areas.
“Do Not Enter Flu Clinic,” warns a hand-lettered sign on doors that are kept closed.
Inside, a nurse tried to persuade 4-year-old Damiyah Pittman to take some medicine. The orange-flavored liquid Motrin went down easy, but when the nurse produced an anti-nausea pill, Damiyah jumped off the bed and ran to a corner of the exam area in her rainbow-striped footie pajamas.
“I don’t want a pill,” she cried, her lip quivering.
Damiyah’s mother, Mary Fields, tried a white lie known to parents everywhere.
“It tastes just like candy,” she said. “It’s gonna stop your stomach from hurting.”
After much persuasion, she took it, her nose crinkling as the tiny white pill dissolved in her mouth. The nurse asked how it tasted.
“Nasty!” Damiyah said, tearing up again.
Fields said she was grateful her employer had been understanding about allowing parents with sick kids time off, but she wishes she had been given more of an opportunity to have her daughter vaccinated.
“They should’ve went to the schools and just gave them to the kids,” Fields said.
Even so, her visit to Parkview’s ER lasted barely more than an hour. Nurse Jon Hoeppner said isolating the flu patients has improved the flow in the emergency department.
Hoeppner worked during a bad flu season a couple of years ago when ER visitors were backed up. While the H1N1 outbreak has caused a sustained influx, the systematic response has kept patient wait times down – making things easier for both patients and staff, he said.
Across town at Lutheran Hospital’s emergency department entrance, a giant red stop sign greets visitors and directs their attention to the hand sanitizing foam and masks hanging in dispensers on the wall.
Nurse Rebecca West started work at 9 a.m. Friday, and although there weren’t many people in the emergency department, she was hesitant to call it a slow day just half an hour into her shift.
“Don’t jinx me,” she said.
It’s hard to imagine West, an energetic blonde with an easy laugh, being stressed by an influx of patients. To West and the other nurses, some days might have been busier than others, but they’ve been trained for that, she said.
Even so, the staff has experienced some illnesses of co-workers and their families.
During the worst of it, supervisors stepped up to cover shifts as needed, Lutheran spokesman Geoff Thomas said.
At 7:30 a.m. Monday through Friday, Tim Davie, director of Environment of Care, meets with colleagues to discuss just that – staff morale and illness – as well as how much equipment, vaccine and medication the hospitals have stockpiled.
That daily “muster” also includes data on the number of emergency department visits.
During the second and third full weeks of October, emergency visits to all Lutheran hospitals were up between 30 percent and 50 percent.
Davie is also in constant contact with the Fort Wayne-Allen County Department of Health. Several times a week he is on the phone with other area hospitals.
“We’re kind of looking at this as a public health thing that we’re all in,” he said. “We’re all in the same boat.”
Like Parkview, during the peak of flu-related visits, Lutheran segregated its flu patients in an area previously used for outpatients.
Lights were dimmed Friday morning in “the Pod,” as Lutheran’s staff calls it. The room hasn’t been used this week.
This downtime will be good for Lutheran’s staff to evaluate its H1N1 procedures and decide what should carry over to the next public health emergency – because there will be another, Davie said.
“We never kidded ourselves,” Davie said. “We knew we were going to be impacted.”
