NY hospital pauses some services as staff quit

[left-of-center2012]

Lowville, N.Y. — An upstate New York hospital will stop delivering babies later this month, in part because of employee resignations over a requirement they be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Six maternity staff members resigned from Lewis County General Hospital during the past week, worsening an existing staff shortage, the Watertown Daily Times reported. The department has seven other unvaccinated employees who also could decide to leave, hospital officials said.

“The number of resignations received leaves us no choice but to pause delivering babies at Lewis County General Hospital,” Chief Executive Gerald Cayer said at a news conference Friday. “It is my hope that the (state) Department of Health will work with us in pausing the service rather than closing the maternity department.” Services also may have to be curtailed in five other departments if staff members resign rather than be vaccinated by the state’s Sept. 27 deadline for health care workers, authorities said.

Cayer said 30 people have resigned since the vaccine mandate was announced last month, most of whom held clinical positions like nurses, therapists and technicians. Thirty others have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, he said.

“Essential health services are not at risk because of the mandate,” Cayer said. “The mandate ensures we will have a healthy workforce and we are not responsible for (causing COVID-19) transmission in or out of our facilities.”

https://apnews.com/article/sports-nfl-football-health-public-health-c3d340c4bfbd5beab3ef6707fa3c20da

[Wingus Dingus]

1. Well...bye.

[Maru Kitteh]

3. + all my recs x all my plausible number of lifetime recs going forward.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

2. Nurses in delivery rooms aren't essential health services?

[Scrivener7]

5. Not if they're going to pass Covid to the mother and baby.

[Mr.Bill]

12. Believe it or not,

babies were being born thousands of years before the first hospital was built.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

14. You want moms dropping their kids alongside the road? What was the infant mortality rate back then?

I worked in L&D and the nursery and post partum ward, oh yeah, nurses are essential.

[Mr.Bill]

16. I am married to a retired L&D RN.

And my daughter has a masters in clinical nursing and runs the birth center at our local hospital. Would you please point out to me where I said I wanted moms to drop their kids alongside the road? That's not the only alternative to having a baby in a hospital. Yes, there would be a very slight increase in infant and mother's mortality. But if you compare it to say, emergency appendectomies or strokes or heart attacks, those things are far more essential. Obviously, I wouldn't insult your occupation, because my wife had the same one. She even delivered a few of them in the hospital parking lot and once at a fire station, sometimes with no doctors present. Fortunately, there were no complications and mother and child did fine.

But child birth is the number one thing that happens in a hospital which most of the times could also happen outside the hospital. On the contrary, and ruptured appendix can't be fixed at home, and cancerous tumors will not exit the body on their own. Babies will.

I admire what you do for a living, keep up the good work.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

17. I didnt come here to fight, lol, just pricked me when he inferred nurses arent essential

I go off sometimes,like a firecracker,lol

[Mr.Bill]

21. Well, for the record, I didn't say that or mean that.

Especially in a small hospital in our small town, OB nurses are often certified to work in other areas when needed. We sometimes go days without a birth happening, then boom, there's three at once, so some personnel flexibility is needed. Some shifts my wife would wind up in ICU or the Med-Surg floor.

I'm sorry if I set you off. I spend a lot of time around the medical community and can sometimes forget I'm talking to someone who doesn't know me.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

23. Its OK, one time in the dark of night a real emergency C-section had me as head OR nurse in OR

Just me, OB doc, pt and gas passer, OK we cant wait,OR crew on the way... you just hand me the instruments...

OK, bladder retractor!

OK what does it look like?

Oh, that round paddle shaped thing there, OK

Me, Where is everbody!!!???



Everything turned out fine

[Mr.Bill]

28. Well, from what I gather from the RNs in my family,

OB is exciting, rewarding and mostly happy times. But balanced by a tragedy now and then. The highs and lows are extreme and it take a special kind of person to do that job. The best part of being married to an RN is nothing shocks them. They've seen it all. I also won't even repeat some of the jokes I've heard from them. Helluva sense of humor.

[Mr.Bill]

30. By the way, I love your signature line. n/t

[Scrivener7]

4. Upstate NY is fire-engine red.

[SergeStorms]

26. Elise Stefanik's district.

I'm sure she had nothing to do with this little bit of political theater though, did she?

[Hekate]

6. Very hard to "pause" baby deliveries. I hope there are other hospitals readily available! nt

[KentuckyWoman]

15. My first thought too.

It isn't like she can just cross her legs and do the potty dance.

[SergeStorms]

33. Watertown, NY hospital....

isn't that far from there. I'm sure they can pick up the extra deliveries.

Where do the health professionals think they're going to go?

There aren't many other hospitals in upstate New York, and they're going to have the exact same vaccine mandate.

Apparently they don't need the money? They all must be independently wealthy.

Either that, or this is a bluff. Political theater plays well in the dead-red areas of New York. They're starved for culture up there.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

7. Welp, this feeds the RW narrative that Vaccine Mandates are responsible for the Bed crisis

I mean, it's BS, of course, people working in hospitals need to be vaccinated, and there's no way enough people are quitting over this to really make a dent in the number of beds (rather, its the influx of unvaxxed COVID cases), but ... it sure would better if they had no such excuses. We know how they cling to their fantasy-world bullshit.

Oh, and they also read it as 'look, hospital workers won't even get this crappy vaccine!!11!'

Overall this is not a good thing.

[Mr.Bill]

22. You make some good points there. n/t

[Shellback Squid]

8. the world needs ditch diggers too

[dweller]

9. You spelled 'grave' wrong ...

n/t


✌🏻

[Shellback Squid]

11. lol

[Leghorn21]

42. D'OH!!

[Captain Zero]

51. The guys who etch names and dates onto gravestones should be getting plenty OT

At least the Covidiots are quiet by that time.

[Hoyt]

10. The Lewis Co Health System has 650 employees. So, maybe 30 isn't that bad.

Of course, it depends how employees are counted and which positions.

Can’t imagine educated health professionals would refuse vaccination. But America has gotten really weird.

[Mr.Bill]

18. Keep in mind when you hear about vaccination percentages

among hospital employees that a good percentage of people working in that building are not medical professionals. There are administrative personnel, engineering, security, cafeteria, groundskeeping, etc. Many of them have little to no patient contact. I does disturb me, though, when RNs refuse to be vaccinated. We have a few at out local hospital also. The Doctors there are 100% vaccinated.

[Hoyt]

37. Having worked in hospitals, house keeping, ward clerks, techs, etc., do

get around patients often. Even admin people get around them.

Anyone in a hospital should be vaccinated, masked, and tested.

[Mr.Bill]

38. I also have also worked in hospitals,

and while I agree they should all be vaccinated, there are many who never see a patient. At our hospital, a lot of the admin people are in a separate building. Since the pandemic, the cafeteria is also closed to the public. Dietary personnel are also not entering patient rooms at this time. The nurses are taking the food into the room.

[Hoyt]

44. The hospital I worked in made sure admin staff had contact with patients,

rather than working in an Ivory Tower. Might have been decades ago, but even Dietary staff served the food in patient rooms, not to mention preparing and serving food to hundreds or thousands of people a day who are coming and going. And the staff goes home, to a football game, and gawd knows what else.

And if there was big accident, shooting, pandemic, admin people were there on the floors.

Obviously, not as much contact as nurses, but physicians weren’t there in most cases any more that housekeeping. Takes a few seconds with Delta to infect a visitor, patient, their family, the Brinx guard picking up the days financial haul, etc.

[Mr.Bill]

46. Dietary usually entered rooms here, too,

but they stopped that. And like I said, the cafeteria is currently closed to the public. For the most part, the public has been shut out of the building unless they have a medical reason to be there. Something else they stopped here a few years before the pandemic is people driving to work in their scrubs. You now arrive in your street clothes then go to a locker room and suit up. Then change when you get off and leave. No scrubs leave the building except for laundry. Having seen the insides of some employees cars, I can understand this rule. Not to mention what their homes may look like.

[NCDem47]

13. In 1996 I was hired by a hospital system to work in marketing

…in an offsite building.

It was MANDATORY to get a flu shot annually, so I did. Not a big deal and everyone did it.

WTF is going on with people today?

[Mr.Bill]

19. In had to do it also just to be a volunteer.

All the same vetting and orientation of a regular employee, too, including a federal background check.

[Bev54]

29. They are willing to die on this hill (literally) it is not like they are going to

get any other good jobs, all need to be vaccinated.

[Mr.Bill]

39. You would be surprised at the job opportunities for RNs

that don't involve patient care. Teaching, for instance. Although teachers should be vaccinated, too. My wife used to get all kinds of recruiting mail as an RN for things like selling long-term care insurance, consulting work, etc.

[Bev54]

45. I am sure there are all kinds of good jobs for RN's and LPN's but unvaccinated ones?

[Mr.Bill]

47. Depends on the job, I suppose.

Of course, I think everyone should be vaccinated.

[moondust]

20. Cripple the health care system

and blame the "crisis" on Biden.

[FakeNoose]

24. I see new job opportunities for younger healthier trained medical personnel

... who are smart enough to get vaccinated BEFORE they apply for a job.

[Mr.Bill]

40. At least in my state, even before the pandemic

there was no shortage of job opportunities for RNs since they passed nurse to patient ratio laws.

[roamer65]

25. Palliative care quarantine facilities.

Food, water, cot and morphine for ALL of the willfully unvaccinated covidiots.

Problem solved.

[Bev54]

27. More women may opt for midwives?? A lot of people in Canada have

My D-I-L had her baby in Feb with midwives, I loved it because we all quarantined to be able to be there. Not in the room but in the house and within the half hour, after my son and D-I-L had their moments, I was able to hold the baby.

[Farmer-Rick]

31. It's for show

They will get the vaccine as their chances of employment dwindle.

Plenty of other people looking for jobs that are vaccinated. The hospital will have those jobs filled in less than a month.

[Mr.Bill]

43. Don't bet on it.

Some states have had serious nursing shortages for decades.

[Aussie105]

32. Is it just vaccination hesitancy though?

I would have thought that a lot of hospital staff would think of quitting, with the demands for extra shifts, low pay and possible COVID exposure from patients?

It may just be the vaccination mandate is pushing some over the brink.

[littlemissmartypants]

34. There's always Canada. Pop over the border, have the baby

And pop back. It's literally right over the river. I've been there. It's beautiful in the summer but can be brutal in the winter. The hospital will survive just fine without them. Plenty of job opportunities for whoever wants to live and work there.

https://www.lcgh.net/careers

[smirkymonkey]

49. Rome and Utica are fairly close by, both medium sized upstate NY cities.

People will make do, somehow. But these people are just being ridiculous and harming their own communities.

[littlemissmartypants]

50. Yep. Good riddance to bad rubbish. As the saying goes. ❤

[ffr]

35. Change and opportunity for those qualified to care for others.

[IronLionZion]

36. Plenty of jobs available at the morgues and crematoriums

they're very busy now

[mnhtnbb]

41. Mom of 5 dies in CA who was a labor & delivery nurse

Not vaxxed. Her husband died, too.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215845944

[Takket]

48. i can honestly say, i wouldn't want people that don't believe in medical science delivering my baby.

if i could have one............

it is distressing but this gives a long term opportunity to get better people into those positions.

[Captain Zero]

52. too many in it just for the bigger than average paycheck

not really dedicated to the medical professions true purposes.
I don't see how they live with themselves, but they do.

[Nay]

55. Yep. It isn't as if training in most medical careers makes you develop a scientific outlook

on anything. You get training in how to do the specific job, and little else. Many people choose the jobs for the decent pay. That's not a crime, but that's where the hospital/employer must step in and demand certain behaviors to protect patients, staff, and visitors. For example, you wouldn't allow a nurse to refuse to distribute prescribed meds because she thought the meds were pharma conspiracies to kill people.

[cadoman]

53. if my worst 30 employees quit voluntary I'd fire up a cigar to celebrate

Make sure to submit their names to the government so they don't end up collecting unemployment or some other scam.

Being unvaxxed must become HELL, because that is what they are putting us through.

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

54. I don't want any TFG supporting antivax Quackanon idiots providing my health care.

Ever.

Good riddance. Hire people with common sense in their place.