NPR: ERs are now swamped with seriously ill patients — but many don't even have COVID

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Inside the emergency department at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Mich., staff members are struggling to care for patients who are showing up much sicker than they've ever seen.

Tiffani Dusang, the emergency room's nursing director, practically vibrates with pent-up anxiety, looking at all the patients lying on a long line of stretchers pushed up against the beige walls of the hospital's hallways. "It's hard to watch," she says in her warm Texan twang.
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This story was produced in partnership with Kaiser Health News.

But there's nothing she can do. The ER's 72 rooms are already filled.

"I always feel very, very bad when I walk down the hallway and see that people are in pain or needing to sleep or needing quiet. But they have to be in the hallway with, as you can see, 10 or 15 people walking by every minute."