Our workforce shortages are extreme, and I think it's been extraordinarily hard on the workforce to go from being heroes to being questioned to being distrusted, you know, to really feeling like they're not only under the gun but also sometimes being assaulted by patients.

John Hick

We can't get any help. And that's honestly the bottom line of the biggest problems here is that we just don't have the staffing, and the personnel resources in particular, and that's really led to an awful lot of burnout... but just the continuing emotional grind, in addition to the physical fatigue of caring for these patients and adapting to the challenges of working in PPE, and being the only connection sometimes between patient and family, has been terribly difficult.

This morning's number we had over 246 patients waiting more than four hours in emergency departments across the state of Minnesota for inpatient beds that are simply not available.

So expect the hospitals to continue to be very overloaded throughout the first quarter of next year.

The rest of us all get a percentage of what we usually order, but that doesn't begin to keep up with what is required, so we're stuck.