“After nine days of work, I am free today, but this is so intense that you cannot turn it off. You feel the pressure: we must be prepared for the worst. On Thursday, we received more than 50 patients at the Emergency First in five hours Help (SEH) New patients were added every few minutes.
In the emergency room, especially corona patients who suffer from shortness of breath and / or fever, come along with general flu symptoms. Often the figures show that they are even more anxious than they feel, then people are surprised that they have to be included. If the influx is so great, we try to transfer corona patients to a department as soon as possible. Almost no one goes home. We see that corona patients can deteriorate very quickly.
It is now a bit quieter, many patients have been moved to other hospitals, but an average of 40 people still come to the emergency room per day. I think that this number will not increase further, in my opinion mainly due to the good primary care in the Netherlands. Not every corona patient ends up here.
‘Really exhausted’
For example, you want to support some older people with oxygen, but no longer send them to intensive care. That is a difference with Italy, I get the feeling. Everyone has ended up in IC there. That is different here, in which home and nursing home doctors also play an important role. You no longer need an IC recording for a certain group of people.
My husband is an anesthesiologist in another hospital and it is very nice that he understands what this entails. Last night I said for the first time that I don’t want to hear about it anymore. That never happens. I have a fantastic subject that I will never be able to talk about. But now I was really exhausted in terms of content, I have never experienced such a feeling.
This week the dog started to strike at half past three at night and normally you turn around again. That is really different now. I am immediately on, a kind of increased state of preparedness, the action mode. You’re also stuck with your phone, do I need anything else, are we ready? I do think that the maximum in the preparation was done in our hospital. The tsunami is coming, but when? “
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