Local ERs need more staff
An emergency room filled with patients, trash cans overflowing, handicapped bathroom floors puddled with urine and no housekeeping staff for 12-hour periods or more. Spreading antibiotic-resistant bacteria no longer appears the hospitals’ concern. When patients are left in the ER for days without necessary tests for a speedy diagnosis and exposed to these conditions because of insufficient staff, the situation is intolerable.
Perhaps a patient enters the ER and is admitted with a diagnosis of exasperated pneumonia but does not receive life-saving antibiotics for days because the ER and admitting physicians overlooked the diagnosis. When conditions as intolerable as these exists for a period of time then the administration, staff and doctors must be aware that because of inadequate staff and a few incompetent doctors it is knowingly and without conscience causing harm to some patients.
Why is it taking so long to hire sufficient staff and why continue to extend the contracts of those doctors who are proving by their actions to cause harm? Most important and urgent: How many more precious lives may be lost before change happens in our local hospitals?
Lena Garcia, Clovis
This story was originally published May 17, 2016 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Local ERs need more staff."