Nurses say hospital is at risk for getting coronavirus

The nurse was pregnant and worried. However, in mid-March, early in the crisis of covid-19, a manager at Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton, PA, was not sent to bed for a patient she had been infected with a deadly virus. Convinced her. The risk for pregnant mothers was too uncertain.

Two days later, she says the hospital has changed policy, saying the hospital needs “all-in-one”. Pregnant nurses said they had moved between the “covid floor” and the neonatal intensive care unit, known as NICU, to treat normally vulnerable newborns and recovering mothers.

She was not only worried about her baby, she said, with the immunocompromised newborn she was treating without notifying them that she was working on a cozy floor. mother. Even when she is caring for a patient with symptoms of covid-19, managers usually provide important protection only after a positive test a few days after the first visit to an infected patient. I offered her clothes.

Nurses told 11 medical staff and union representatives from within to explain how hospitals in a small Pennsylvania city struggled to protect medical staff and patients during the chaotic early days of the crisis Was one of Seven nurses working at two sister hospitals in Scranton have spoken of an anonymous condition for fear of retaliation for Community Health Systems, a Tennessee-based company.

Like many hospitals across the country, Moses Taylor did not prepare for the influx of highly infectious patients without large amounts of protective gear. But the steps taken by the CHS to address the crisis are outstanding. According to nurses, the shortage caused managers to first work with suspected covid-19 patients without the appropriate protection of staff, worried that they could infect cancer patients and infants. I was told to go back and forth between them.

Staff members interviewed by the Washington Post stated that they were speaking out of confusion, carelessness, and anger over greed to be from a company owner far away from concerns about what seemed dangerous. .

Nurses and union representatives said that many of their safety concerns had been fired just recently during a meeting with hospital administrators on Friday, April 3rd. However, on Tuesday, after the CHS was contacted by the post, the hospital announced some changes in its policies to prevent the spread of the infection.

Michael Brown, chief of the hospital, stated in a statement that covid-19 was an unprecedented challenge that required frequent changes, and that the hospital followed guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control.

“No one has ever experienced a health crisis of this magnitude,” he said. “We adjust and improve our response daily, and we are incredibly proud of the way our doctors, nurses and team members work together to care for our patients and each other. Yes. “

Matthew Yarnell, Chairman of Service Workers International Union Healthcare PA, the state’s largest nurse and healthcare union, welcomed the change announced this week. Hospital with 214 beds.

However, he said in a statement, “Motivating the CHS to prioritize the safety of patients and first-line caregivers should not draw attention from national media.”

The hospital said in a statement that the temperature check was carried out on April 4, but a note to officials The Post obtained this week stated that it had taken effect on April 8.

CHS, with 99 hospitals in 17 states and one of the largest for-profit healthcare companies in the United States, has spun off, sold and closed more than 200 hospitals in the chain in 2014. CHS is facing considerable debt, and its share price has been more than half since the pandemic began to take root in February.

“ Over the past few years, we have made significant progress in our business and financial performance and the company has returned to a positive trajectory with potential for future growth, ” said Tomi Galin, chief spokeswoman for CHS, in an email. Stated. “Since 2016, we have sold hospitals and repaid debts, creating a stronger core portfolio for the future.”

CHS has six hospitals in Pennsylvania. In interviews, workers at other CHS hospitals also reported issues regarding lack of protective equipment and inconsistent policies since covid-19 patients began to be hospitalized.

Union officials, representing nurses, say they have repeatedly sought to raise concerns about danger to members and patients, but were largely rejected until this week.

A second nurse working in the neonatal intensive care unit said the fear of retaliation was the reason she could not speak publicly. “That’s why I stuck so much about being anonymous,” she said, “because it’s ugly.”

She and others said that they had lost the opportunity to help the sick and the vulnerable, exactly what they wanted to be a nurse. They say tensions between management and hospital policies have put them in an impossible situation where they endanger the lives of their patients.

“I feel like these guys are loading guns,” the nurse said. “But we have to trigger.”

On the question of whether a pregnant nurse would be removed from duty on a cozy floor, one nurse said that the chief medical officer of the hospital told her, “Never is.”

“And only men and postmenopausal women take care of these patients,” she recalled what he said.

The hospital stated in a statement that the allegations removed the police officer’s comments from the context.

“ What he was saying was that the CDC was unable to give instructions at this time about pregnant healthcare workers, ” without CDC guidance, only men and post-menopausal women would care for COVID-19 patients. You can’t ask, “said the statement.

Landers said no definitive research has been done on the health risks of pregnant nurses, but hospitals should postpone nurses’ concerns and relocate nurses if they are concerned about safety He added.

Moses Taylor is an emergency hospital with 400 doctors best known for pediatric and neonatal care. Last year, with more than 2,500 births and an average of 48 births per week, nurses were worried about how to give birth to their babies without infecting their mothers.

Nurses who saw the coronavirus march around the world a few months ago stated that they had no guidance and no plans for management when the coronavirus reached the hospital threshold. . Their anxiety was further exacerbated by past experience: even before this crisis, they said that Moses Taylor was constantly abusing supplies and shifts to cover busy wards.

The only sign they saw that the hospital was preparing was when managers began to trap critical N95 masks and gear in administrative offices that could prevent infection. A nurse asked the manager what he would do if the medical staff were infected, and he said, “I will understand it when the time comes.”

Chief Executive Brown has filed a complaint with the hospital stating that the hospital is transparent to staff on covid-19 cases, protective clothing supplies, staffing, and “other matters important to them”. What is going on. “Moses Taylor said he was caring for seven patients with confirmed covid-19 and five patients whose trial results were still pending as of April 8.

At the beginning of March, when the first patients began to arrive, staff say they received different instructions daily from the manager on how to protect themselves and the patients. Later last month, a nurse working on the floor that houses the oncology and orthopedic departments came across the hospital’s chief medical officer.

“We lost the coin toss between us and another floor,” the nurse said. “We were going to have a cozy floor now.”

They immediately placed a dedicated nurse on the floor and replaced other nurses between departments. Some nurses have transitioned directly from treating covid patients to administering chemotherapy to cancer patients who are particularly at risk from covid-19 infection.

Nurses on the orthopedic and oncology floor complained to supervisors about the risks at the start of the shift. The manager told her that after a nurse had already treated several cancer patients, she would investigate the problem and provide guidance at the end of the day. She did not receive a reply from her supervisor. “It goes to one ear and goes to the other,” she said.

Even though nurses have secured access to protective clothing, they said it was very limited. They were expected to wear disposable masks for five shifts. Some were told to disinfect the mask with rubbing alcohol. Others have been told to use one mask each time they treat a particular patient and put it in a paper bag until the next time-virus particles can move and potentially infect them Some practices. They treated a virus patient in protective clothing and witnessed staff members sitting in corridor chairs without taking off.

The hospital states that it has followed the CDC guidance on the use and reuse of protective masks and has sent a link to a recommendation specifically mentioning the use of paper bags for N95 storage. However, the same recommendation does not allow the mask to be reused in such situations without sterilization.

“After close contact with a patient who has been co-infected with an infection requiring contact precautions, discard the N95 mask,” the recommendation states. Obio professor Landers said Covid-19 is such an infectious disease.

“It would not be an example of good practice,” he said of Moses Taylor.

According to nurses, protective masks were only provided to treat confirmed covid-19 patients. However, nurses are often expected to enter the room without knowing the condition of the patient.

“They just tell us, you know, go check, and look OK,” one nurse explained. “You never know what you are going to. You don’t know why this person is in the hospital. I don’t know what they have. Nothing.”

The hospital has been told by medical staff to report symptoms since mid-March, but nurses say managers ignored symptoms they reported more than once.

In one case, two nurses reported that a nurse at home with a newborn baby and a young daughter who gave birth to a disease for two days with fever and cough reported work and asked if they would work. The nurse’s boss sent her to HR. The HR department sent her back to her boss, who measured her temperature.

Despite taking ibuprofen, she still had a low fever. One nurse said, “You don’t have to worry.

The problem is widespread. One of the NICU’s nurses said that staff had been asking for weeks if pregnant mothers came in with signs of infection. They could not answer. And that happened at the end of last month.

“It was literally a mess. Nobody knew what was going on. I had to fight to get an N95 mask to take care of this mother,” she recalled.

Then they did not know where to take the baby for isolation. The administration wanted to send the newborn to pediatrics. There, older children were at risk of flu and other illnesses.

Just days after the incident, she said, the hospital provided a written plan for such a situation.

The hospital states that no newborn or new mother has tested positive after hospitalization.

Nurses’ claims come as hospitals across the country are facing the torrent of screening and mask shortages and infections and expanding their capabilities. Similar concerns to those raised by Moses Taylor’s medical staff were recently highlighted in a survey of hundreds of hospitals by internal monitoring agencies of the US Department of Health and Human Services.