The growing number of positive COVID-19 cases is making it harder to staff nursing units in central Illinois.
Jennifer Hopwood, chief nursing officer at OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, said nurses aren't allowed to work their shift if they're showing any COVID-like symptoms—regardless of whether it's related to another virus.
“The challenge that we have with COVID illness is that there’s a long list of symptoms that could be for any other viral illness,” Hopwood said. “So, as we have people come down with other viral illnesses, we aren’t sure whether or not it’s COVID and they still have to be off work.”
Hopwood said staff go through temperature and screening checks before they’re allowed to start their shift. Like members of the public, nurses with symptoms are encouraged to contact OSF HealthCare’s COVID-19 hotline. Testing is recommended when appropriate, she said, and symptomatic staff members must be cleared by a physician before they can return to work.
Hopwood said the number of off-duty nurses at any given time is fluid.
“We've seen as many as into the hundreds at Saint Francis Medical Center,” she said. “That increase in the number of mission partners off really follows the trend line with the incidents of COVID in our community.”
Hopwood said the hospital employs about 1,600 nurses, so having 100 off-duty is manageable, with the right contingency plan. But officials have seen more workforce shortages related to day-of call-ins in the past two or three weeks, as the rate of infections in the Tru-County region ticked up.
Toni Bishop-McWain, chief nursing officer at OSF Saint Joseph Medical Center in Bloomington, said the hospital has not experienced the same challenges—but that could change.
“My concern is college kids that just came back to town—that feel invincible and could be asymptomatic carriers,” she said, referring to the start of the fall semsester at Illinois State and Illinois Wesleyan universities and Heartland Community College.
Bishop-McWain said McLean County is lucky to have fared better than the Peoria-area in terms of COVID-19 cases. But she said hospital beds and nursing staffs are still limited, if cases were to skyrocket.
The OSF HealthCare system laid out plans for how to handle staff shortages when the pandemic accelerated in March. That involves utilizing those scheduled to work first, offering voluntary overtime, and floating staff to different areas of the hospital if they have competencies in those areas.
Bishop-McWain said cross-training should help alleviate some of the strain, adding there’s already a lot of overlap in what nurses do regardless of what unit they work in, making those transitions fairly easy. For others, she said, it may be a little bit of an adjustment.
“If we were in the unfortunate situation where we would have to pull from, say, quality and safety—somebody who normally looks at data and helps us—and they’re a registered nurse, we would have them do tasks on the floor and not provide direct patient care,” she said.
At OSF Saint Francis, Hopwood said they’ve moved into the next phase of contingencies to ensure they have the necessary staff.
“We did implement our emergency operations plan related to the pandemic, and our staff are required to sign up for on-call shifts to provide as a backup in the event that we need them related to the pandemic—not to cover normal vacancies that we have within positions, but really the response to the pandemic,” Hopwood said.
She said the on-call schedule goes through the beginning of October to give the hospital a two-month staffing security blanket in the event COVID-19 pandemic continues to trend in the wrong direction.
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