LA doctors, nurses and EMTs face darkest days amid COVID surge
LOS ANGELES – At a hospital near South Los Angeles, doctors debate whether an elderly patient should be hooked to one of the few remaining ventilators.
Meanwhile, nurses at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood fear they are treating too many patients to provide them all with the best care.
And for emergency medical technicians, racing the sick to hospitals has become an obstacle course, with not enough beds for the hundreds of patients in need. Once an ambulance that has responded to a 911 call finds a hospital, it can take up to 17 hours to offload the patient.
These are dark days for Los Angeles County doctors, nurses and EMTs, marked by levels of death once unimaginable in the United States, despite tireless efforts to treat patients.
"It's a war zone," said one doctor at an L.A. County
