BRIDGTON — At the rural hospital half a mile down the road from Bridgton’s main promenade and more than 40 miles away from the closest trauma center in Lewiston, “COVID care is a part of everything we do right now,” said Bridgton Hospital President Peter Wright.

Back in March when Maine saw its first coronavirus case, Wright said that the hospital “had no idea what we were dealing with, so we locked everything down.” In the ensuing 10 months, the hospital, which is part of the Central Maine Healthcare network, developed a protocol and “learned how to protect our patients and team members from the virus,” he said.

Bridgton Hospital is a critical access hospital, which means that although it is able to handle incoming emergencies, it has only three “intermediate care” beds and its most serious cases are transferred to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, said Jill Rollins, a registered nurse and director of Nursing and Patient Services.

“The first however many months was just different and we were learning a new way to practice and take care of our patients in the midst of fear of our own safety,” Rollins said in an interview Tuesday. That came on top of the staff’s concerns about getting exposed or exposing their patients to the coronavirus, she said.

“Now, today, everything is sadly an old hat,” she said.

The hospital now has five sealed “negative pressure” rooms, which have increased air circulation, that are now dedicated to COVID patients. It can handle six COVID patients in “extenuating circumstances,” according to Rollins. It also has the three intermediate care beds, for patients whose care has not yet elevated to intensive care or whom are waiting to be transferred to CMMC.

“We have seen record volume in the patient unit where we are full to capacity every day,” Rollins said.

“As soon as I open up a bed, we’re admitting someone or we’re taking a transfer from CMMC so they can handle more critical patients,” she said.

Finding beds for patients is a national issue, but “certainty a state and local issue,” she said.

“We are holding very, very sick patients in our emergency room for hours, if not days sometimes.”

Rollins, who oversees a staff of about 75 nurses, said everything about their work is now amplified. Patient care is more intense in that, even when not dealing with a COVID patient, staff members must be constantly vigilant to protect themselves and patients from exposure. Staffing shortages – whether because a nurse has “the sniffles” and must stay home out of precaution or because older and at-risk professionals retired early –  are an everyday challenge. And, the isolation and exhaustion of the work wears on everyone.

“My team has been burning at both ends,” Wright, the hospital president, said Tuesday. “We’re short-staffed so people are working extra. And it’s hard and that wears on you emotionally, no matter how committed you are.”

Outside the hospital walls, “I’m more scared now than I was before because people aren’t taking it as seriously as they should, and on top of that, they’re tired,” he said.

Just as his staff has experienced the mental health toll of the pandemic, Wright believes the general public’s  desire for a return to normalcy, to gather with friends and family or to not wear masks, is reflected in the spike in cases post-Thanksgiving and Christmas.

“We are busier, no doubt, than before,” he said.

Rollins said that they were only able to start admitting COVID patients in December where previously, “we were not able to offer the therapies needed so patients were transferred to the larger medical centers.”

Since then, however, Rollins estimates they’ve admitted “dozens” of COVID patients.

Not only is the system’s patient capacity being stretched to the limit, but Wright and Rollins both said that the patients they are seeing now are sicker than those they saw before the pandemic.

Wright said that it comes down to a number of factors, one of which is that people are delaying preventative or routine care because they’re afraid go out to see their doctor or come into the hospital.

Patients are putting off cancer screenings, for example. Instead, people are only coming in once symptoms are more severe.

In the emergency room, Rollins said she’s seen two shifts. On the one hand, they’re seeing fewer people use the emergency room for non-emergent cases where before the pandemic, that was more commonplace. On the other hand, people are delaying coming in until the situation is at its most acute.

She recalled had a patient she had last spring who was experiencing chest pain but kept putting off coming in to the emergency room. The man was ended up having a heart attack. He recovered, but “that scares us,” she said.

Wright said that there hasn’t been a single case of the virus transmitted among patients or staff within the hospital.

“If I have one message: It is perfectly safe to come to the hospital to get care or your doctor’s office,” he said. It is “quite literally the safest place to be.”

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