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The first call in early April came from the test center, telling the nurse that she was positive for COVID-19 and needed to be quarantined for two weeks.
The second phone call came from my employer in less than 20 minutes, as the hospital told me I could get back to work within two days.
“I slept for 20 hours a day,” said a nurse working at the Hackensack Meridian Health System hospital in New Jersey, and spoke of anonymous conditions because he feared retaliation from his employer. Regarding digestive COVID symptoms such as diarrhea and nausea, she had no fever, but said, “I was nauseating. I was coughing. I had all the symptoms of GI.” It was
“Are you saying I don’t have a fever and you think it’s safe to take care of my patients?” said the nurse. “And they told me so”
Guidance from public health professionals has evolved as we became more knowledgeable about the coronavirus, but one message is consistent: Stay home if you feel unwell.
However, hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare facilities ignore the simple guidance that pressures workers with COVID-19 contracts to return to work faster than public health standards, which they and their colleagues may ignore. , Or suggesting that it is safe for the patient. Some employers, if at all, were unable to provide enough paid leave, so employees could be coughed or infected, rather than abandoning the wages needed to feed their family. Even if there was, I felt I needed to get back to work.
Many hospitals that were not ready for a pandemic were understaffed, struggling to find enough carers to treat the onslaught of the sick. Its urgent need is linked to a deeply rooted culture in “presentative” medicine. In particular, front-line healthcare professionals follow the brutal spirit of being tough enough to work even if they get sick under the idea that people are ill,” says Stanford University. Andra Bromkarns, who heads the emergency department, said.
In a survey of about 1,200 health workers who are members of the Health Professionals and Allied Employees Union, about one-third of those who said they were ill had to return to work for the duration of their symptoms. I answered.
This pressure not only causes stress, as hospital employees are forced to choose between salary and health or family health. A study by KHN and the Guardian identified at least 875 front-line health workers who died in COVID-19, possibly exposed to the virus at work during a pandemic.
But the dilemma also puts a strain on the health care professional’s sense of professional responsibility and knows that they can be vectors that spread the infection to the patients they intend to treat.
Under pressure
The COVID complaint database submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Department this spring hints at the extent of the problem. Primary care facility in Illinois where symptomatic COVID-positive employees had to work. Breathing Clinic in North Carolina. COVID-positive employees were said to be fired if they were at home. Veterans Hospital in Massachusetts. The employee was ill and was returning to work because he was not otherwise paid.
“What I learned in this pandemic was that I felt that my employees were single-use,” said Debbie White, a registered nurse and health professional and chairman of the Union Workers’ Union. “The employer didn’t protect them and felt like a product.”
In fact, the pressure during a pandemic may be even worse than usual, as hospitals lack the backup staff to handle the high rates of absenteeism due to high infection rates and severe viruses. There are no pandemic staff at the hospital. This is because “personnel, equipment maintenance costs for things that may never happen” was difficult to justify for a particular need. Virginia State University Health System in Richmond.
As a result, many hospitals are having difficulty finding skilled staff who tend to be waves of COVID-19 patients.
A nurse at Hackensack Meridian, New Jersey’s largest hospital chain, told the hospital’s Occupational Safety and Health Department that he could not return to work, citing doctors’ instructions to isolate himself. She said she was not afraid to fire her.
However, daily calls from work reminded her that she was “suffering” from the lack of colleagues.
She also found that her employer canceled most of the paid leave she believed she had accumulated.
According to Mr White, the Hackensack meridian performed what was called a “salary adjustment” in March and took vacations from many employees without explaining its calculations.
According to a statement released by Hackensack Meridian spokeswoman Mary Joe Leighton, the system’s Department of Occupational Health said: “We are following the CDC’s recommendations for team member assessment, testing, and clearance of COVID-19 infections.” “apparently.
Hackensack Meridian adjusted vacations for some employees to fix a technical issue where they weren’t counted when vacations were taken, adding workers would be provided with a’personalized PTO settlement statement’. He said.
A Hackensack Meridian statement said, “The team members have never short-circuited a legitimately acquired PTO.”
Federal authorities have acknowledged that due to lack of staff, sick health care workers must return to work before recovering from COVID-19. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention even has a strategy for that.
CDC website List of mitigation options For facilities lacking staff, some are widely practiced, such as canceling the selection process or providing housing for workers living with high-risk individuals.
But it acknowledges that these strategies may not be sufficient. If all other options are exhausted, according to the CDC website, workers who are suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19 (and “enough to work”) are Patients who are not immunocompromised can be treated first. A person who has been confirmed to be COVID-19 and has a second suspicious case.
Websites say healthcare professionals identified as having COVID-19 “as a last resort” may provide care to patients who do not have the virus.
Like the soldiers on the battlefield, frontline workers are absorbing the consequences of lack of preparedness at the institutional and social level, Lapley said.
“This will leave scars for generations,” she said.
Personal choice or no choice?
Shenetta White-Ballard had an oxygen cylinder in his backpack at work. A legacy nursing and rehabilitation nurse in Port Allen, Louisiana, needed breathing help after fighting a deep respiratory infection two years ago.
She appeared at work when COVID-19 began to spread. Her husband, Eddie Ballard, said his salary from Wal-Mart was not enough to support their family.
“She kept growing, she needs to pay bills,” he said.
White Ballard died on May 1 at the age of 44.
Legacy nursing and rehabilitation did not respond to requests for comment.
According to Ballard, his wife’s employer did not support him and his 14-year-old son after his sudden death. “The only thing they said was “Come on to get her last check,”” he said.
Liz Stokes, head of the American Nursing Association’s Ethics and Human Rights Center, said immuno-compromised workers, in particular, face difficult decisions during a pandemic.
Stokes details the experience of a surgical nurse with Crohn’s disease in Washington who temporarily took a leave at the doctor’s suggestion but was pressured by his boss and colleagues to return.
“She expressed a real guilt because she felt she had abandoned her duties as a nurse,” she said. “She felt like she was giving up her colleague, her patient.”
what to do
Residents, or physicians in training, are the most vulnerable because they are inflexible and often work on tight schedules, helping to support the frontline care of dozens of patients daily.
Shortly after one of the first confirmed COVID-19 patients in New York City was admitted to the New York Presbyterian Hospital, Lauren Schleimer, a first-year surgical surgeon, reported developing sore throat and cough. She was not exposed to the patient, so she was able to continue working and was told to wear a mask if she had a cough.
Her symptoms subsided. However, a few weeks later, she had worked in a COVID-only intensive care unit when her symptoms returned, due to a surge of cases and a lack of mechanical ventilation.
The hospital instructed her to stay home for seven days, as recommended by the health authorities at the time. She has never been tested.
A spokesperson for the New York-Presbyterian Hospital said of the front line workers: “According to the New York State Department, we have always worked to provide the support and resources they need to fight their entire lives while protecting their own health and safety. Health and CDC Guidelines.”
Schleimer returns to the asymptomatic ICU at the end of quarantine and takes care of a patient who fights the same virus she suspects she had. She didn’t feel that bad, but she worried she could get infected. An immunocompromised nurse, a doctor who risked him at his age, a newborn baby colleague at home.
“It wasn’t like I was at home,” Schleimer said. “But I definitely had some symptoms and was just trying to do the right thing.”
