A Puzzle

Paul Reisdorf

Someone would come in for a basic procedure, like an endoscopy. And all of a sudden, something would happen, and we’d get a call saying ‘we’re going to keep this patient intubated, because things didn’t go too well, and I need an ICU bed.’ I’d report that we don’t have an ICU bed,’ and they’d ask, ‘What do you mean, you don’t have an ICU bed?’ It’s those kinds of situations all the time. You have to come through; you have to sit there and call the charge nurse and then we would have to see which patient could be moved.

That was the biggest struggle – you never were sure that was going to be the last ICU patient that needed a bed.

Paul Reisdorf, Administrative Nursing Supervisor

So you would give this ICU bed, and then all of a sudden you have a COVID patient that’s that’s on heated high flow and needs to be intubated. Then all of a sudden, there’s two more that pop up – one from the ER, and one from inside the hospital. 

Our job is like those thumb puzzles where there’s 12 pieces in there and one piece missing. You take that puzzle, and you have that one spot. So if you have a full ICU and you have to move everybody down to a smaller unit to get people into the ICU – it was our job to make that all happen. It’s like a puzzle, except they’re giving me nine extra pieces to fit into that one space.