MARTINSVILLE, Va. – Local health professionals are preparing for an intense flu season.
Dr. Gunn-Nolan has been with SOVAH Health for over ten years and said the flu season is expected to be particularly intense this year in addition to COVID-19.
“When COVID first started, we had virtually zero flu,” Dr. Gunn-Nolan said. “As masking requirements and things like that lessened, the flu cases start to trickle in, and actually flu has been hanging around a little bit longer than what it used to.”
She went on to say this brutal flu season is stretching hospitals and other facilities even thinner.
“Not just burnt out, burnt out isn’t even the word,” Dr. Gunn-Nolan said.
More and more people are leaving the healthcare field, and hospitals are short-staffed.
“Every hospital in the country has those concerns these days,” Dr. Gunn-Nolan said. “We hear it when we try to transfer patients either out or in. Every healthcare system across this country is stretched thin with staffing.”
This has been the case throughout the entire pandemic.
“We know how to do it. We’ve done it before. We stick to the basics and stick to the roots of those plans,” she said.
SOVAH is encouraging healthcare professionals to take care of themselves so they can take care of others.
“We all know why we went into this field and that’s to serve our communities,” Dr. Gunn-Nolan said. “But, we’re also taking a huge step back and saying that we need to take care of ourselves.”
Dr. Gunn-Nolan said that you can also help the hospitals this flu season.
“Our goal here is to save a life,” she said. “For every person that gets vaccinated, your chance of death is so much less.”