Medical care is something everybody needs at some point in their lives. Yet sadly enough, it is something that is not accessible to everyone. Although this is a nationwide issue, it is extremely prevalent in Humboldt county. A prime example of this problem would be our extremely understaffed hospitals. Understaffing has become an increasingly common problem, especially due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In an article by Times-Standard, they interviewed James Ladika, a nurse at our local St. Joseph hospital. James’s description of the current situation was nothing short of distressing. According to James, “There is another ADO from Jan. 5 and the nurse in the (emergency department) called the administrator on duty basically pleading for help and the administrator on duty said, ‘Deal with it.’” (Ladika). James followed this statement up by saying, “I have not seen a single administrator on the floor. On Thursday, I worked in a busy (emergency department) and I didn’t see administration. When you’re in a crisis situation, that’s when leadership should be most visible. But I feel like the opposite is true in this hospital,” he said. “When things are at their worst, administration is least visible.”(Ladika). The nurses of St. Joseph are practically pleading with their administration for help, and all they are receiving is bleak, blunt statements telling them to deal with it on their own. The administration has been no help to our front line workers, in a time of crisis, they are being left in the dark. .The understaffing, lack of leadership, and COVID exposures are all causing the decline of the hospital. This directly affects most, if not all other aspects of our local medical care. Another concern is the quality of care here, even some who are lucky enough to get an appointment can't get a follow up. For example, a patient who just had knee surgery could be told they need physical therapy within 1-2 weeks to ensure a healthy recovery. That same patient could have to wait up to nine weeks or even more to receive the care they need. This is the exact same situation Erika Nelson was put into. This directly ties into the impaction of our medical system, specifically the field of physical therapy. Many surgical patients are relocated into physical therapy, however many clinics lack the staff to support the influx of these patients. This is also on top of non-surgical patients, these two factors together have seemed to overwhelm the clinics. This overwhelming pressure often causes physical therapists to “burnout”, and move their practices out of town to a less stressful environment. In an interview with my brother, someone who works at one of these clinics, he stated his opinions on the issue, saying that, “Most mental health services, pretty much anything under the umbrella of what we call medical care, there’s an overwhelming amount of people that need help in each discipline and not enough people here to provide it.”(Evenson). Understaffing and lack of available resources to care for our community has become an apparent issue, and one that has been an issue for a long time. In a 2006 survey of humboldt county, “13.1% of the respondents from Humboldt county reported leaving for medical services- the most commonly reported reason for regularly leaving the county for health services was quality is better elsewhere (44.7%), followed by needed services were not available (37.7%).”(Survey). Now sadly, what this means for new providers looking to start their practice in Humboldt County, is that they are going to be hit with the remnants of what other providers have left behind. What I mean by this is that there’s a massive backlog of patients looking for care, whether it be from a normal injury or condition to surgical patients who are in more of a dire need of the same care. Over time, this backlog becomes too much for any single clinic to take on, and with many care providers leaving the area due to burnout, there’s no way to tackle the buildup. Another issue our system faces is the lack of quality equipment, more specifically our MRI machine(s). In the same interview with my brother, he gave me insight into this situation, saying, “ Patients can rarely get an MRI unless they’ve proven a severe need for it, but even once they’ve come to physical therapy, and done the recovery they were supposed to, it can take them months to get an MRI-There’s different levels of MRI’s, and here locally we have one of the lowest quality MRI types, so people will wait months to get an MRI that may not even be precise enough to show them exactly what’s wrong.” (Evenson). Now even after the patient gets an MRI, they’re still caught in a cycle of struggling to get scheduled and treated. This again causes patients to need to leave town for better quality treatment, furthering our problem. I believe it is of great importance to solve this issue, to better the wellbeing of our Humboldt county residents.