Intensive Care Unit

Hospitals around the U.S., including large academic medical centers like Vanderbilt University's in Nashville, Tenn., have been forced to rely on traveling nurses to keep their intensive care units fully staffed. The demand for travel nurses has driven up

Health & Safety

Worn-out nurses hit the road for better pay, stressing hospital budgets — and morale

5:00am October 20, 2021

by Blake Farmer

In areas overwhelmed by COVID cases, hospitals must rely on traveling nurses to operate ICUs. Hospitals pay a premium for that temporary help, while also struggling to keep their staff nurses happy.

In Idaho, a record number of people are hospitalized with COVID-19, raising the possibility of rationing medical care. Many states are grappling with the fallout of the delta variant's surge in cases.

Health & Safety

A COVID Surge Is Overwhelming U.S. Hospitals, Raising Fears Of Rationed Care

7:00am September 05, 2021

by Will Stone

The delta variant is pummeling America's hospitals, taxing an already-depleted health care workforce. Once again, some states are facing the prospect of rationing medical care.

Sepsis, which is sometimes called blood poisoning, is essentially the body's overreaction to an infection.

Health & Safety

Vitamin C Fails Again As Treatment For Sepsis

2:26pm February 24, 2021

by Richard Harris

Sepsis is one of the most common causes of death for hospitalized patients. The search for an effective treatment has been frustrating.

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Niticia Mpanga, a registered respiratory therapist, checks on an ICU patient at Oakbend Medical Center in Richmond, Texas. The mortality rates from COVID-19 in ICUs have been decreasing worldwide, doctors say, at least partly because of recent advances in

Advances In ICU Care Are Saving More Patients Who Have COVID-19

7:51am September 20, 2020

by Richard Harris

One thing that has improved a lot over the course of the pandemic is treatment of seriously ill COVID-19 patients in intensive care units. Here's one man's success story.

Dr. Daniel Colon Hidalgo is a physician in the intensive care unit of a Chicago Hospital, where many of the COVID-19 patients he's tending are unconscious and terribly Ill from the minute he meets them.

On Dying Alone: 'Behind Every COVID-19 Case, There Is A Story'

7:00am June 06, 2020

The unconscious man was a Beatles fan, his sister said. When she couldn't be with him in his final ICU hours she asked Dr. Daniel Colón Hidalgo to play music and say the words she wanted him to hear.

A nurse at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Manhattan holds a cellphone last month so a COVID-19 patient can see and listen to his family.

Health & Safety

New Evidence Suggests COVID-19 Patients On Ventilators Usually Survive

4:16pm May 15, 2020

by Jon Hamilton

Early reports found death rates as high as 90% among COVID-19 patients on ventilators. But some hospitals are now reporting mortality lower than 30%.

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Physical and occupational therapists carry bags of personal protective equipment on their way to the room of a COVID-19 patient in a Stamford Hospital intensive care unit in Stamford, Conn., on April 24. This "prone team" turns over COVID-19 to help them

Health & Safety

Hospital ICUs Are Adapting To COVID-19 At 'Light Speed'

4:01pm May 05, 2020

by Jon Hamilton

With COVID-19 becoming a critical focus in hospital intensive care units, nurses, doctors and other caregivers have had to shift gears to protect staff and save patients.

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A medical worker transports a patient at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, where doctors noticed that some young COVID-19 patients without other risk factors had strokes.

Health & Safety

Doctors Link COVID-19 To Potentially Deadly Blood Clots And Strokes

2:29pm April 29, 2020

by Jon Hamilton

COVID-19 appears to thicken the blood of many patients, making them vulnerable to clots that can damage the lungs, kidneys and brain.

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Nurses reposition an intubated COVID-19 patient in a prone position in the intensive care unit at Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center, Chula Vista, Calif., on April 10.

Health & Safety

After The ICU, Many COVID-19 Survivors Face A Long Recovery

4:42pm April 21, 2020

by Jon Hamilton

David Williams, 54, spent eight days on a ventilator after he got COVID-19. Weeks after being discharged from the hospital, he still needs an oxygen tube and a walker.

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MedStar Washington Hospital Center's "ready room" in Washington, D.C., has mostly been used to house emergency supplies — but some storage carts have been moved out to make way for patient assessment stations.

Are U.S. Hospitals Ready?

2:16pm March 17, 2020

Here's what it will take for medical facilities across the nation to handle the coming surge of COVID-19 patients.