The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic in a Medical ICU: Nurses' Travel Distance

In this study, the nurse's workload in a medical intensive care unit (ICU) was analyzed through the measurement of travel distances and compared between before the pandemic in Feb 2020 and during the pandemic in Feb 2021. The total moving distance of each ICU nurse in four main locations (i.e., a nurse station, central desk, patient room, and hallway) was collected by using the near-field electromagnetic ranging system, which is the advanced real-time location system. We hypothesized that the COVID-19 pandemic significantly influences the nurse's travel distance. The results showed no significant difference in travel distance at the central desk between the Feb and July data. However, the ICU nurse's travel distance in the patient room was significantly increased while the travel distances in the hallway and nurse station were decreased. The findings from this study will help us to understand how the pandemic affects the nurses' workload in a medical intensive care unit. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Burn bed availability in the northeast region during the covid-19 pandemic

Introduction: The coronavirus disease pandemic has placed enormous strain on all medical services with ICU capabilities throughout the Northeast region. The surge in ICU beds might severely limit burn centers to accept burn patients in a regional mass casualty incident. Methods: Burn bed data was collected by a regional burn disaster consortium. Open burn bed census was collected via telephone from each burn center in the consortium on April 15th, May 7th, May 21st, June 4th and June 18th of 2020. This data was compared to published data from 2009 to 2016. Results: The results are listed in Table 1. Lowest available burn bed was 35 beds on April 15th, 2020. Conclusions: Although a disaster may impact surrounding local and state hospitals, it does not always impact a burn center's ability to transfer patients from a local trauma center or nearby burn center. A pandemic however affects a larger region and impacts all hospitals within that region. Peak ICU utilization in the Northeast was between the second and third week of April. During the peak utilization time, burn bed census was about 50% of the historical average. Burn bed census did not return to historical average until May 7, 2020. If a mass casualty event occurred in the pandemic region, the Northeast region would have to reach out to other ABA designated regions for assistance. Historically, burn mass casualty plans are based on the capacity to move burn patients to other burn centers in order to relieve surge capacity at the affected center. This data illustrates that, in a pandemic, burn beds are being utilized for non-burn patients. The ability to follow these plans will be greatly impacted.