Every hospital in the United States is bracing for a potential deluge of patents with COVID-19 infection and many of these patients will require admission to our country’s intensive care units. There are not enough critical care physicians to manage all of these patients so it may be necessary for doctors and nurses who do not normally manage critically ill patients to step in. Although we hope that the seemingly draconian measures our countries leaders are taking will “flatten the curve” of the prevalence of COVID-19 in the United States and minimize the demand on our hospitals, it remains possible that the critical care crisis that has occurred in Northern Italy will happen here.
The Ohio State University Medical Center is taking a multi-faceted approach to the COVID-19 outbreak and one of the tasks that I was assigned was to create a webcast that could be used by physicians around the world who need to know how to manage COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit. Rather than repeat everything from that webcast in this post, I’m giving you a link to the 1-hour webcast by my colleague, Dr. Rachel Quaney and myself. I’m hoping that this presentation will give physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists the tools that they will need to improve the survival of these patients who are in our ICUs. Click this link to access the webcast.
March 20, 2020
