I quit my job last week. I was working another Urgent Care shift and I finally reached my limit. We have been slammed with the third wave of Covid. Volume is up to over 100 patients a day. This compares to normal times when 40 patients is considered a busy day. That’s 100 patients. 12 hours. One provider. One nurse. One X-ray tech. One front desk person.

Since the last surge, we have been begging our management to do something to relieve the pressure. For a brief two-week period, they paid time-and-half if people would pick up extra shifts. They had some shifts double staffed with providers. They even shut down registration when things got out of hand. But these were temporary, intermittent, and not consistent. By and large, we were just told to “deal with it.”

A particularly galling policy was that we’re obligated to see anyone who walked in right up to 8 p.m. we literally had patients walk in with less than a minute to go. This frequently resulted in our having to stay till 8:30, 9, or even on a few occasions 10 p.m. We’re told it was “Corporate Policy” as if this made it Holy Writ. We begged them to at least stop registering patients at 7:45 so we could have some hope of leaving at a reasonable time.

And so, December 30.

When we walked in, we were faced with over 30 patients in the online “save your spot” queue. Opened the doors and 10 more patients immediately rushed in. We got to work and were grinding through the patients. Covid positive. Covid negative. Influenza. Covid test for travel. Ankle injury. Etc., etc. At 1 p.m., I notice we are at 50 with the patients seen, the number in the waiting room, and those currently in rooms. Still almost 30 in the online queue.

At 2:30, I see we have 35 in the waiting room. I ask the nurse to tell management they have to shut down registrations so we can catch up. I’m told, “you’re going fine. You are seeing more than 8 an hour, and you should be able to see them and get out around 8 p.m.” We grind our way through the patients and by the time I take a break for dinner at 5:30 we are down to 12 in the waiting room and four more in the web check-in.

I come back in for the final push at 6 and try to clean things out. At 7, I notice we are down to about 10 patients, but suddenly two more pop up in registration. And two more are in line when I go to the registration desk. When asking the desk person, I’m told we are “just registering injuries and stuff like that.” And that’s when I snapped.

I get on the phone and call the clinic manager, and point out we are now 45 minutes from closing, still have eight patients to see and you have opened us up for more patients, pushing the total we are going to have to see to well over 100 patients for the day. Not for the first time, I pointed out that this was abusive of the staff, and frankly dangerous. And I told her I was resigning my position. I finished up my patients, thanked the staff for their hard work, emptied my locker, and walked out the door.

I’ve been in medicine since the 1970s. Starting as an orderly in the local ER, progressing through Med School, graduating in ’82, and working through a 40-year career, military Flight Surgeon, Residency Staff, EMS Medical Director, Hyperbaric Medicine, International Medicine, and most of all ER Physician. I’ve been able to see and do amazing things. It’s been a great ride.