McHenry County Health Department to hire more staff after logging over 1,400 overtime hours in January

The McHenry County Department of Health will hire more staff with the help of a new grant after reporting high rates of staff burnout due to the stress of pandemic-related workloads, which have been ongoing for almost a full year now.

The public health nursing division's 12 employees logged a cumulative total of 1,433 overtime hours during January alone, Public Health Nursing Director Susan Karras said in a McHenry County Board of Health meeting last week. Given that the vast majority of those employees are salaried, overtime hours are unpaid, she added.

"I'm very honored to work with this team because they don't complain," Karras said. "But I am worried about burnout. ... We are starting to see some cracks, so we're trying to address these as quickly as possible and making sure that people are getting the help and support that they need."

On Monday, the department was notified it will receive a grant from the Illinois Department of Public Health for $790,000 to help with "staffing, equipment, and supplies" associated with the county's mass vaccination efforts, Karras said in a written statement Tuesday.

This will allow the department to hire staff specifically dedicated to mass vaccination clinics, so that their employees do not have to continue supervising clinics on top of their regular daily responsibilities, Karras said in last week's meeting.

She said she hopes to use some of the funds to hire eight to 10 vaccinators, but the main need is to fill leadership roles, such as registered nurses or safety officers.

Turnover among the health department's core staff has been "surprisingly minimal" given the circumstances, Karras said Tuesday, adding "staff is very dedicated to their service/commitment to McHenry County residents."

This does not mean the effects of staff burnout are not apparent, though, Karras said. Employees have had emotional responses to the amount of stress they are under, as well as "expression of frustration, insomnia (and) 'short fuses,'" she said.

"We want to make sure that our staff is not only healthy physically but mentally as well," McHenry County Board Chairman Mike Buehler said in an interview Tuesday. "Working those kinds of hours on an ongoing basis itself is just a major drain. ... You can only do that for so long before you need a break."

The county board has regularly expressed its desire to support the agency in any way possible as it is put to the test in an unprecedented way, Buehler said.

Many of the health department's staffing requests in response have focused on specific or new initiatives related to COVID-19, such as the county's expansion of contact tracing, the new COVID-19 vaccine call center and, now, the ramping up of mass vaccination clinics, Buehler said. The health department's main team has essentially remained the same size throughout the pandemic, he said.

Buehler said he, County Board member Lori Parrish and County Administrator Peter Austin met with the health department a few days prior to last week's board of health meeting to offer a more immediate solution to the department's staffing concerns as they wait for the grant money to come in.

The county board feels confident in extending this offer as new positions could be funded through existing federal COVID-19 dollars, as well as new federal funding likely to come with President Joe Biden's new stimulus package, which will be taken up by the U.S. Senate this week, Buehler said.

Buehler said he expects to hear back from the health department this week on what kinds of immediate positions they might like to add, but added that finding suitable candidates in a time when public health expertise is in such high demand could be a challenge.

"For quite a few of these positions, it's not like you can just throw anybody into the position," he said. "There's training involved and expertise."

He said they are trying to identify tasks within the health department's workload, such as data entry, that could be done by a less specialized employee and are considering relocating staff from other county departments to fill those roles.