(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Emergency room staff members at Rush University Medical Center are relieved the vaccine is almost here as they try to deal with the second surge of COVID-19 cases.
"There's a little bit of dread, in that I know what my day's going to look like," Dr. Edward Ward, vice chair of emergency medicine Rush, said Tuesday.
"We're going to have a ton of very sick patients coming in with COVID, in addition to the ones who come in for non-COVID. So, that does start to wear on your mental psyche to be able to do this."
Ward said it's been challenging to keep staff engaged.
"When people start getting that vaccine and we know that the beginning of the end hopefully is in sight, that also adds to your resiliency to make you want to come back in and just knock this out of the park the next day and the day after that until we just run out of COVID patients. That'd be awesome."
Dr. Ward says the vaccine is expected at Rush on Thursday, and the first medical workers will be vaccinated on Friday.
