LOS ANGELES – As medical teams continue their frontline battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a lot of news about possible supply and equipment shortages; but, in this environment, both people and skills are also a valuable resource that could quickly become in short supply as patient numbers continue to rise.

To help alleviate some of the workload stress on intensive care nurses, if a patient surge does occur could expect patient capacity to increase by 100 to 200 percent, Keck Medicine of University of Southern California just trained some 50 surgical residents to step in to perform essential ICU nursing services in event of a significant surge.

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Chris Foran, chief resident of general surgery at USC, was one of the trainees and says the supplemental training he received gave him a new perspective.

“As physicians, we often walk into an ICU room and we see a lot of screens with a lot of numbers and a lot of machines running,” said Foran via Skype. “And we're trained to analyze the numbers that we see on those screens. But as residents we rarely are involved and the machinery that gives us all that information. And, so we certainly developed a newfound respect for ICU nurses and all the work they have to put into managing a single critical patient.”

 

 

 

Training residents to perform tasks like drawing blood, hooking up IVs, calibrating machines, and administering medication can help ease the workload for the ICU nurses who normally care for two patients at a time, but now could face up to six.

The resident trainees are MD’s and possess many overlapping skills with ICU nurses, but the training allows them to perform tasks that aren’t normal to their daily routine. But, Foran stresses that the residents are meant to merely support the ICU nurses.

“There is no way we will be able to replace an ICU nurse,” Foran said. “These nurses are some of the best health care providers in the country, in the world, and they spend years training to render the care that they're able to give our patients. The whole goal of this is to make our residents as versatile as possible.”

Meghan Lewis, associate director of surgical ICU LA County/USC helped set up the training sessions after residents asked what they could do to help. Lewis said even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was already a shortage in qualified ICU nurses countrywide.

“This is something that in general is in high demand,” Lewis said. “It's a very specific skill set. It's not something that can be learned overnight. There's a lot of unknowns right now. We have to prepare for any range of the things that we've seen.”

Despite the uncertainty, Foran said hospital staff is upbeat.

“Everyone is ready to raise their hand and jump in when needed,” he said. “Even if that care is a little outside of what they normally perform on a daily basis.”

While many are projecting SoCal has yet to hit a peak in COVID-19 cases, USC is also considering training medical students to assist should the need arise.

Most hospitals are soliciting donations. For more info, visit LA County's website.