The strain on hospitals during the current COVID-19 surge is partly because there are not enough medical professionals to treat everyone.
Nurses are sounding the alarm over how many extra patients they are being asked to care for. Currently, California law dictates how many patients can be assigned to one nurse. Last week, the state started issuing waivers so that, for example, an ICU nurse can treat three patients instead of two.
"That’s an increase of 50% in our workload, which leads up to 25% worse patient outcomes and 23% higher likelihood of job burnout and this is according to the journal of the American Medical Association," explained John Pasha, an ICU nurse in San Jose and member of the California Nurses Association.
The union explained the changes will lead to more fatigue among already exhausted nurses and claims hospitals are exploiting the coronavirus pandemic, an accusation flatly rejected by the California Hospital Association.
"It means making us more fatigued and more prone to making mistakes," California Nurses Association President Zenei Cortez said. "It will mean more of us will get infected, become patients in their own hospital intensive care units, and die."
In a statement Wednesday to KCBS Radio, CHA President Carmela Coyle called it "false - and worse, irresponsible - in the middle of the greatest health crisis in generations."
The statement went on to say that "nothing could be further from the truth" and without this temporary staffing flexibility, very sick patients will wait on gurneys in the emergency department until a specially-trained ICU nurse is available.
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