I'm a pediatric nurse seeing 50 RSV patients a day. This is what it's like treating inconsolable toddlers with the illness.

Karen O'Donnell Fountain is a nurse at two large New York City hospitals.

Karen O’Donnell Fountain

• Karen O'Donnell Fountain is a nurse who works at two large New York City hospitals.
• She said it's heart-wrenching to watch babies and toddlers with RSV who can't breathe on their own.
• This is O'Donnell Fountain's story, as told to science reporter Paola Rosa-Aquino.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Karen O'Donnell Fountain, a 56-year-old nurse from New York, about RSV, a respiratory virus that is surging in kids across the US. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My experience this weekend was crying.

The emergency room was full and we had multiple hallway beds throughout that were full, also. They opened up a zone in the hallway where we transported patients down to the emergency and put beds there so that we could keep seeing patients.

You're trying to help 10 people all at the same time, and you're trying to deliver medications, or get an IV in, or pull labs. It's very rough, because there's so many of them and only one of you. It is very tiring, and I think it mentally adds to what we go through.

This is the busiest RSV season I've seen in my career.

As a healthcare worker, I definitely think it's due to kids not being exposed to germs and not being able to fight off the virus as they were two years prior because of COVID. We're heading into very rough waters for the pediatric population.

It's extremely hard to watch a child experiencing RSV symptoms

It's heart-wrenching to watch any patient, especially a 3-month-old who can't breathe on their own. You're the nurse, so you are doing things to them that they do not appreciate. I had a 3-year-old that I had to put an IV in, and drew labs on, and he was a fighter.

You also always have empathy for the patient and the parent. They're at a loss because they can't help — most of the mothers have a hard time consoling the child. When you have anything that makes it hard to breathe, it just makes for a very upset and very unhappy child.

I've seen full emergency rooms and pediatric intensive care units

This was the busiest RSV season Karen O'Donnell has seen in her nursing career.

Karen O’Donnell Fountain

I work in two large New York City hospitals, and both pediatric intensive care units — or PICUs — are full.

Over the weekend, our PICU was at max capacity, with most patients experiencing RSV-related symptoms and diagnosis. These are younger patients, 5 and below, and are definitely very inconsolable. Trouble breathing. Not eating. We also had 50 people in the pediatric waiting room waiting to be seen.

I've heard this from other PICU nurses in other parts of the country. Their PICUs are full, and patients are staying in the ER until a bed opens up in the PICU.

I think parents are bringing in kids with colds worried that it might be RSV

If your child is playing, eating, running around, watching TV, and active, they probably have a common cold and we don't want you bringing those children in because it clogs up the ER. We don't want to put someone who's severely ill behind someone who's not.

I triaged two young girls on Sunday, and they were both sent home. It was just a common cold — it wasn't RSV — and they waited 3+ hours. The ER is an emergency room. It is for emergencies. And especially going into flu season, we want to try to keep the emergency room clear so that we can help the sickest of the sick.

We're seeing a shortage of pediatric nurses across the country

Not everyone can be a travel nurse. Not all people are cut out for it. You leave your home, your family, your friends. Most of the contracts are 13 weeks that you are away. If you have kids, it's very straining.

It's also a very lonely job. It takes a while to make friends, to have somebody to talk to at work. It's not a life for every nurse.

But if you like to travel, and if your kids are older, and your spouse wants to travel with you, it's an amazing life.

I work with a healthcare company that supplies travel nurses, and we have seen 100% uptick in the request for pediatric nurses and PICU nurses. I think that's due to a lot of PICU nurses during COVID taking care of adult patients. They have now transferred to the adult world instead of going back to PICU. It's having a huge impact on the nursing shortage in the pediatric areas.

When you're short-staffed, it means that your nurse-to-patient ratio or your physician-to-patient ratio goes up. It's having a very large impact on the nurses that are still actively bedside, and it's increasing the nurse burnout. It's increasing fatigue, dissatisfaction, and depression.

It's definitely having a negative effect on us. We're tired.

All these TV shows that are out there, like "Grey's Anatomy" and all that — they hook you on it, but that's not healthcare. No one has time to flirt, OK. There's none of that going on.

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