The Georgia Department of Public Health put out a call Tuesday for medical volunteers to help fight the coronavirus pandemic in Georgia.
The move comes as more and more cases of COVID-19 are confirmed. Hospitals are seeing more patients with the disease, and Georgia is facing a shortage of nurses.
Officials warned last November that the nursing shortage had reached a crisis level.
“The primary contributing factors are non-competitive salaries and the loss of personnel to retirements without the capacity to recruit new nurses,” according to a DPH presentation on retention and recruitment of nurses.
Matt Caseman, the executive director of the Georgia Nurses Association, says as the virus continues to grow, he worries that “our nurses will get burned out and that we have enough nurses on the front line.”
