LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The increasing patient load at hospitals right now is requiring extra hands to help.
It's why some nurses from Riley Hospital for Children are being redeployed to other IU Health hospitals to fill a critical pandemic need.
In the frontline battle against COVID-19, nurses are being called up as crisis-fighters in what they call a 'war zone'.
"You hit the ground running as soon as you walk on the floor," said Kayla Meeks, a Riley registered nurse. "We've seen these patients who have managed at home for a week and they come in and they're on a ventilator for a month. It's incredibly important that things start to change because it's...it's tough right now."
Meeks is one of 16 Riley Hospital nurses being redeployed as reinforcements in Lafayette, temporarily leaving their posts caring for children, to treat adults.
IU Health Arnett Hospital has had a surge of COVID patients recently and a critical staffing shortage.
The hospital is at 50 percent ICU capacity right now. It was at 90 percent just a couple of days ago.
And the west-central Indiana region's averaging 25 nurses in quarantine for the past few months.
Meeks is stationed on Arnett's progressive care unit, tag-teaming with an Arnett nurse to provide care.
"I think that's just kind of the epitome of 2020...was just adaptation and knowing that change is coming and kind of going wherever you need to go. And this is just another example of that, and it's just really just awesome to be a part of something so great that's just so helpful for patients," Meeks said.
Arnett now has three to four Riley nurses on every floor, one per shift, to ease the burden.
The Riley nurses will be working there for about six weeks.
"When they only have like four or five nurses, when you tack one on I mean that's a 20 percent workload difference," Meeks explained. "Having extra nurses and extra hands on deck is so beneficial and it's so important to keeping the system running smoothly. I think they really appreciate it and it's such a blessing for us to be there too. I think we all feel really lucky to be able to help them out in such an awesome way right now."
It's a small army of health care heroes now using teamwork in a tough fight.