Hospital Struggles To Treat 18 Waukesha Parade Victims Because Of Vaccine Mandate

A high-ranking official said the hospital currently has hundreds of open positions and attributes much of the staffing shortage to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The largest children’s hospital in Wisconsin has been struggling to care for patients in injured in the Waukesha Christmas parade attack on Nov. 21 in large part because of staffing shortages stemming from its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, multiple sources say.

Eighteen children were brought to the Children’s Wisconsin Milwaukee Hospital with injuries suffered when a driver plowed into parade-goers that Sunday afternoon. Several remain in critical or serious condition, and an eight-year-old boy died of his injuries Tuesday. As of Monday morning, the hospital was still treating seven victims.

Six people were killed when a suspect identified as Darrell E. Brooks, Jr. allegedly plowed into parade-goers approximately a week ago. He has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.

Sources at Children’s Wisconsin indicate that when victims first started to be transported to the hospital, it did not have enough nurses or support staff to adequately handle the sudden rush.

“It was a nightmare,” said one nurse, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she is not authorized to speak on the record. “We just don’t have enough people and [supervisors] were frantically calling in everyone they could, but it wasn’t enough. We are taking care of everyone the best we can, but it’s hard.”

A high-ranking official at Children’s, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the hospital currently has hundreds of open positions and attributes much of the staffing shortage to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The Children’s Wisconsin website lists 239 open positions at its Milwaukee hospital and more than 450 across all of its campuses.

Earlier this fall, Children’s set a Nov. 15 deadline for all staff members to be vaccinated against COVID and boasted of 90 percent compliance. Children’s Wisconsin spokesman Andrew Brodzeller said in late October that any employee who was not fully vaccinated by Nov. 15 would be fired the following day.

“While we don’t want to lose a single team member, we recognize some small number may make the decision to not get vaccinated,” he explained.

Children’s Wisconsin has not released the number of employees who were fired as a result of non-compliance and has not yet responded to a request for comment on this story.

The hospital system’s religious exemption requests were due Sept. 15, and The MacIver Institute reported that more than 70 percent of them were denied. On Oct. 14, Children’s was forced to close its Delafield clinic until the end of the year because of severe...

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