MEADVILLE, Pennsylvania — A crush of names clogs a computer screen in an office where sick and hurting people shuffle in one by one, bundled against the winter cold.
Nurse Aubrey Schmeider calls that office “the Tree Lodge,’’ with its big window into the emergency department waiting room. She will spend the first four hours of her 12-hour night shift here in Meadville Medical Center’s triage office, just beyond the waiting room filling with coughing people — coughing, dry, wet, productive, the just-can’t-shake-it coughing that’s saturating hospitals like this one in the Crawford County seat at the height of the 2022 cold and flu season.
“How would you rate your pain on a scale of one to 10? When was the last time you had COVID?” the 28-year-old Ms. Schmeider asks each patient, her voice practiced and caring. “Do you smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or use any illegal drugs? Can you roll up your sleeve? Can you stand on the scale?”
