In short, it's not good. Normal times for her community are always a bit stressful and burnout is real. Prior to COVID, a typical community, non-academic job, consists of 12 hour shifts and and at least 15 shifts a month. Some of those shifts will be weekends. Expect at least 3-4 nights. Realistically, the shifts end up being longer because of charting and billing. Alternatively, if someone codes (dies) at the end of the shift, you're there longer to see that the patient is stabilized and to give a proper sign out to the next physician. When COVID started, the number of shifts per month went up. Simply, there are more sick patients and more people dying, so the work requirements were higher. Practically, that means double the number of worked weekends and nights. More days a month. Really, they end up with only a handful of days off a month.
Beyond that, a couple of things started to really wear on the community over time. One, physicians like to see their patients get better. For COVID, once they hit the ICU, they're probably going to die. And, it's not just they show up and die right away. Medical technology is really good. Mostly, they stay on the vent for weeks at a time in a very fragile state and then they die. Emotionally, it's very difficult to see someone that you care for intimately die like that, repeatedly. Two, grieving families are rarely easy to deal with, but COVID has made them incredibly abusive and hostile. It's pretty common now for the families to either in person or on the phone to scream, berate, and degrade the physicians and the care they provide. They accuse them of trying to kill their family or to providing inadequate, incompetent care. They Google the treatment of the week and demand that it be used. When they don't get what they want, they threaten lawsuits or demand transfer to another hospital. These transfers are not possible since moving the patient will kill them and the other hospitals are already full. Now, most physicians don't require someone to kiss their ass (some do), but given the amount of time, energy, and tears that they put into taking care of someone, it's deflating and demoralizing to be treated like this. No one wants to. There's always been abusive families, but I'll contend that the situation has gotten much worse. Three, many hospitals have put restrictions on the personal lives of their staff, which has diminished their ability to cope and recharge. A common refrain is that they're "all hands on deck," which translates to a ban on out of state travel or approved vacation. Now, while it's important that the medical community set a good example and keep their patients safe, they're also people and need to decompress. So, things like going one state over to a national park while staying in a remote cabin are now fireable if you get caught. Certainly, this is not the case everyone, but not so uncommon.
But, really, the primary stressor now is that, from a medical point of view, the whole situation is rests on stupidity and it's incredibly frustrating and stressful. All of the cases my wife sees now are unvaccinated. It's not to say there aren't breakthrough cases, but she's not getting them. Now, eventually, someone gets close to dying and the family gets called in. They'll ask ahead of time, "Are you vaccinated?" Universally, the answer is no. They push a little, "Soooo, your mother/child/husband/wife is sitting here dying of COVID, you may want to think about a vaccination." They'll answer, "No, I'm good and I want to come in." Then, they'll say, "Alright, fine, but this person is on BiPap and you may want to wear an N-95 before you enter the room." Then, they'll complain about masks. After that, two weeks later, they get the mother/child/husband/wife in the ICU. It's horrific.
What can be done? In my opinion, money's not the driving factor. Get the vaccine. Just do it. It saves lives. It works. Just get the vaccine. The medical community really is burning out and I can assure you that when you eventually hit the hospital for something related to COVID or not you're going to want them on their A-game. They're not going to be with the amount of time this has gone on. Get the vaccine.