Oregon hospital workers crush plaques to relieve stress

When health workers at Salem Hospital feel stressed, the hospital’s wellness department usually recommends yoga or deep breathing. But a year and a half after the COVID-19 pandemic, with a new wave of hospitalizations driven by people refusing to use the ongoing open-access vaccine, health workers are out of stress. They are erased, cried and exhausted, and yoga and deep breaths are no longer cutting it off.

To vent employees ’frustrations, Salem Hospital created a“ rage room ”area where workers can take out rage by throwing dishes on the wall.

A Salem Hospital nurse named Lisa told AP News that she and her colleagues had hoped this Delta wave would not come, but it did. “And it’s getting harder, worse than before,” he said. They currently have 15 patients with ventilators and people dying in the ICU.

He said he has made extensive use of the dishwashing booth.

“We put on safety goggles, grabbed plates and smashed them. And I kept going back. I kept going back and they told me I had enough turns.”

That is correct. Our health workers are resorting to breaking plaques in a room of rage because people’s refusal to get vaccinated makes them work a hell of a lot. Throwing a plate against the wall is a much better option than throwing a bed at a patient, and controlled acts of destruction can prevent a doctor or nurse at the end of their wit from venting their anger and exhaustion in an unhealthy way. . But really? Have we reached that?

Gather it, America. We are in a baffling global pandemic and we have an easily available vaccine that is very effective in keeping people out of the hospital. This is not really complicated.

This new wave of hospitalizations is occurring even in Oregon, which has so far been relatively good in the pandemic. The implementation of some of the country’s strictest mitigation measures has resulted in some of the lowest COVID rates in the country, and vaccination rates are generally high. But these high rates are somewhat skewed by certain counties. Some Oregon counties are still barely pushing 50% fully vaccinated, and combined with low levels of immunity to previous COVID infections (the ironic drawback of having managed the pandemic well so far), the increase of the Delta is filling hospitals. Since Oregon and Washington get the lowest number of hospital beds per capita in the U.S., there isn’t a ton of room for a wave of hospitalizations.

Things are even worse for health workers in states with lower vaccination rates. Hospitals are full and filled with younger, healthier patients than in previous waves. As Charles Fox, MD, medical director of Ochsner / LSU Health System in North Louisiana, puts it, “the new risk factor is ‘I’m not vaccinated.’

Remember when we all concentrated behind our health heroes when we didn’t know how to help them? Now we know how to help them.

Staying unvaccinated can be a “personal choice,” but it affects everyone around you. You are more likely to get COVID, which means you are more likely to spread it and keep the pandemic at bay. If you get COVID, you are more likely to be hospitalized, which affects hospitals and health care workers. And when hospitals are filled with COVID patients, this prevents people with other urgent health care needs from receiving help, so your choice also affects them.

We have full hospitals and health heroes throwing plaques on the walls, people. Give them a break and get vaccinated.