As weary health care workers across California enter the 19th month of the pandemic, thousands are walking off the job and onto the picket line, demanding more staffing. The strikes and rallies threaten to cripple hospital operations that have been inundated by the COVID-19 Delta surge as well as patients seeking long-delayed care. More than […]
Nurses
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Nurse Shortages in California Reaching Crisis Point
In the past month, four emergency room nurses — exhausted by the onslaught of patients and emotional turmoil wrought by COVID-19 — have quit at the Eureka hospital where Matt Miele works. Miele, who has been a trauma nurse for four years, is actively looking for a less stressful nursing position and has colleagues who […]
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Flash Fiction 2020
Once again, our readers are the writers in the annual contest of narrative brevity judged by a team of story lovers: Booklegger owners Jennifer McFadden and Nancy Short, retired children’s librarian JoAnn Bauer, Eureka Poet Laureate and College of the Redwoods professor David Holper, and myself. The influence of the pandemic is visible here and […]
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Fatigue, Fear and Frustration
If you talk to healthcare providers treating COVID-19 patients at St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka, the linchpin in Humboldt County’s pandemic response, they all have a story to tell about when the reality of their challenge hit home. For Kristen Beddow, the charge nurse in St. Joseph’s emergency room, it was losing a patient. Beddow […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Humboldt To Go
Melissa Harnden has a little time before her next shift at St. Joseph Hospital. Her light brown hair is pulled back into a ponytail and she’s already in a set of black scrubs with black and white trim as we chat over Zoom, the neat, neutral-toned walls of her home flashing past as she carries […]
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Nurses Picket for Staffing, Increased Aid Amid COVID-19 Pandemic, T-S reports
Local nurses and supporters held an information picket today on Harrison Avenue by St. Joseph Hospital, part of a nationwide effort to call for increased staffing and federal funding amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Times-Standard reports. Read the full story here.
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These California Medical Workers Are Signing Up for Newsom’s Health Corps — Despite Risks
It’s people like Stephen Kamelgarn, a family medicine doctor, who answered Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for help preparing the state for a surge in coronavirus patients. Kamelgarn, 69, still practices part time in retirement. He signed up immediately for Newsom’s California Health Corps, even though he’s in the age group most at risk of falling […]
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St. Joseph Nurses Decry Operating Room Staffing, Hospital Pledges ‘Comprehensive Plan’
The California Nurses Association issued a statement this morning indicating that nurses in St. Joseph Hospital’s operating room worked their Friday shifts while formally objecting to what they deem “unsafe staffing” conditions that included a nurse working a 15-hour shift. According to the association, nurses worked Friday in the operating room under an “assignment Despite […]
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St. Joseph Nurses Allege Understaffing, Departure from Values
Representatives from the local chapter of the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United convened in front of St. Joseph Hospital last week to discuss concerns over the health system’s proposed merger with Providence Health & Services, as well as what they call a “shift in values” from its founding principles. The union rolled out […]