COVID-19 is forcing a nursing staff shortage on Harbor Regional Health Community Hospital (HRH,) but it’s not just a problem Grays Harbor has to deal with, it’s a nationwide problem, according to HRH CEO Tom Jensen.

Jensen was speaking via Zoom to the Hoquiam City Council on Monday night, Jan. 24. He was invited to talk about hospital “Divert” status — which means the facility has announced to EMS that they do not have the capacity to take in any new patients.

Jensen pointed out the hospital’s staff shortage of nurses.

“Covid has definitely had a huge impact on nursing staff, not just in the Harbor, but all across the United States,” Jensen said. “I think that’s a struggle for all of us. It’s probably hit us a little more than it has for some of the others. I can tell you there’s like 6,100 jobs for registered nurses in the state of Washington alone that are not filled,”

While a shortage of nurses clearly hurts a hospital’s goal of helping patients, some might not know what nurses do. This is a list of some of the duties — not a complete list — for which registered nurses are responsible, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

• Assess patients’ conditions

• Record patients’ medical histories and symptoms

• Observe patients and record the observations

• Administer patients’ medicines and treatments

• Consult and collaborate with doctors and other healthcare professionals

• Help perform diagnostic tests and analyze the results

Jensen said there is a variety of positions that are difficult to fill.

“Unfortunately for us, when you’re kind of the last hospital at the end of the road, it affects our community in a great way,” he said. “I’ll tell you, it’s been going on, I would say, not since the beginning of the pandemic, but definitely last year was a hard year for us as an organization.”

That struggle to hire nursing staff includes nursing assistants and environmental care technicians.

“We have definitely seen every job description becoming harder and harder to fill for a variety of reasons, but mostly because people are getting out of the business,” he said.

Jensen also noted that fewer enrolled students at Grays Harbor College also hurts HRH in its staff shortages.

“Enrollment’s down 20 to 30%,” he said. “Not just in nursing but in college altogether.”

Jensen said if students don’t go on to college, there’ll be a dearth of health care workers.

“It could be a multiyear problem just from that standpoint,” he said.

The enrollment at Grays Harbor College has dropped significantly — about 23.2% — between the 2018-19 academic year and the 2020-21 academic year.

The enrollment number at Grays Harbor College — including its main Aberdeen campus, Riverview campus in Raymond and the Columbia campus is Ilwaco — in 2021-20 was 2,189. The enrollment number in 2018-19 was 2,847. The number of students in 2019-20 was 2,614, according to Grays Harbor College. The fall quarter enrollment number has decreased by about 24.5% since fall 2018. The number of students in fall 2018 was 1,979. Fall 2021’s number was 1,495 students.

Jensen said he thinks there is a lot going on that plays into the problems the hospital is facing.

“I’m not really sure (what) the best answer is, other than we’re doing the best we can with what we have and we’re working with (Emergency Medical Services) Dr. Julie Buck,” he said.

Buck said EMS takes patients to the facility that is in the patients’ best interest.

Jensen said sometimes the problem is that EMS is short-staffed so they cannot take people out of the county.

“We all try to work together,” Jensen said. “I’d say it’s collaborative, but it’s not ideal by any means. Some diverts are based on staffing.”

He pointed out that sometimes equipment is down for regularly scheduled maintenance and that the hospital makes sure to communicate that to EMS.

“Maybe it’s just an hour or two (hour) delay,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we go on divert (status) for equipment failures as well.”

Council member Jim George, Ward Two, said he learned a lot from what Jensen said Monday.

“Obviously, I think they’re handling it in a way that makes sense,” George said. “I’m satisfied with what they’re doing, but (I’m) not happy we got into the situation in the first place. I think it was good to have the communication we did because a lot of what they said we did not know before.”

The hospital faced staffing shortages in August 2021, too. Staff was having difficulty finding qualified, or even interested, applicants, The Daily World reported then. As a result then, the existing staff had to pick up shifts and support each other the best they could. The issue then was people unvaccinated putting a “strain” on the hospitals throughout the county.

George said he knows a part of the hospital’s problems are because of COVID-19, which has negatively affected hospitals’ efforts nationwide.

“I know part of that is due to COVID and the high number of unvaccinated people we have,” he said, while also noting that he knows now of the supply and demand issue the hospital is facing with finding qualified applicants.