I'm a senior nursing student and this debate arose with a couple of my classmates and me. I work as an ER tech and they work as patient care techs on the floor. As of right now, CDC guidelines state for PPE:
Quote
Updated PPE recommendations for the care of patients with known or suspected COVID-19:
Based on local and regional situational analysis of PPE supplies, facemasks are an acceptable alternative when the supply chain of respirators cannot meet the demand. During this time, available respirators should be prioritized for procedures that are likely to generate respiratory aerosols, which would pose the highest exposure risk to HCP.
Facemasks protect the wearer from splashes and sprays.
Respirators, which filter inspired air, offer respiratory protection.
When the supply chain is restored, facilities with a respiratory protection program should return to use of respirators for patients with known or suspected COVID-19. Facilities that do not currently have a respiratory protection program, but care for patients infected with pathogens for which a respirator is recommended, should implement a respiratory protection program.
Eye protection, gown, and gloves continue to be recommended
So basically CDC is saying wear an N95 if you have it, but if you don't, wear a surgical mask until you can get an N95.
So if you have a suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patient, and all you have is a surgical mask and no N95, can you refuse to take care of that patient? Do you face any legal repercussions or potential fallout from your employer if you do refuse? Asking not only about tech positions, but RN positions as well.
Companies just sent 280 million masks overseas. Those shipments should have been stopped and redirected to our facilities. Trump still hasn't released the supplies promised by the Pentagon. 1000s of ventilators apparently don't work because Trump let the maintenance contract expire last year. He didn't accept the tests from the WHO months ago, and is still delaying testing around every corner.
It appears that it is not just an accident that we dont have equipment. It looks like a result of precisely calculated moves by the White House to make things worse than they need to be.
Face it. We can work at a big hospital for years with loyalty, dedication and sacrifice, but they have rarely been on our side. If they have to bid more to get the same supplies that used to cost a lot less, well that is what they should do. We are the ones thrown under the bus through all this. Thus, I wouldn't mind if a nurse doesn't want to risk hurting themselves or their families or patients by exposing themselves intentionally to the virus. Kudos to those who risk it, but kudos to the ones who don't. Who am I to tell them what to do? Who am I to tell on them if they don't agree with me?
This! One nurse decides to go. One decides to stay. Who is right? Probably both of them. I think it is a very nuanced topic.
I personally think I would have a more selfless attitude if the proper PPE whole fiasco were completely out of the hospitals' and governments' control. But they KNEW a pandemic was inevitable and decided the risk (our lives) was worth it. (Bc we prove to them over and over and over again that we will take it bc of personalities we see on here ?)
Classic Millennial thinking and I not only don't care about what you think of me, I can't stand nurses like you either. Selfish! Selfish! Selfish!
Don't you freaking get it????? What do you think happens during a national emergency that overwhelms a hospital system? That you can demand your 15 minute breaks twice a shift plus a full 30 minute lunch and by gosh, your PPE before you touch anybody even though it's on backorder and no amount of money can produce it? Even though the corporations can't crank it out fast enough? Even if there isn't enough in the entire United States????
Let's stop calling nurses heroes...today...right now, if that is going to be your attitude. We are not heroes if we run when the fight gets tough, even if it risks our own life. We have chosen a profession that not everyone can do.
I have done CPR on someone to save their life before without any protection at all and had their blood ALL OVER my hands and face. That is what I am willing to do when called upon. Clearly you are not that kind of nurse.
CDC doesn't produce PPE and if you were paying attention to the regulations, other alternatives were listed in case we ran out.
There isn't always going to be a PPE fairy.
A national emergency where other countries with less gdp and budgets were better prepared for and had their staff equipped with supplies. Your a civilian not a soldier under attack from rockets, where you try to survive, be a bit rational.
Have been fascinated by the thread of narratives following the statement of the ED nurse under "discipline" for illness related to covid19 exposure, however one processes whether this actually occurred or not (the exposure/ illness resulting).
Therefore, it seems worthwhile to consider that there are many reasons this should spur an industrial surge toward nursing power and organization. If we do continue to organize, will need to drop comments that exhibit vivid levels of disapproval and nastiness. "Tone".... counts for a lot, and it is difficult to control your tone in print.
Now.... we hear from a manager who has compassion for nurses, an employee caught on social media evidently manipulating a situation. The manipulator will wash out... without anyone doing a thing about it. The compassion will last. Legal assistance is nearly always worthwhile, because that is one of the few remaining avenues to take a stand, and its main value may be anecdotal and educational, if not directly employed. You do not pay $400, or any price at all, for seeking a legal consult... and there are many kinds of legal, from medical/malpractice to administrative law and beyond. Once an administration commits a thing to paper, it has a life of its own. Not everything is worth fighting, for sure, but it is worth examining the many ways your fellow nurses are serially disempowered by this trickle of threats, and then, the trickle of unsupportive responses to a situation that should have been reformed by our ordinarily compassionate culture. I assume, we have been well trained to attack each other, because horizontal violence is the common ground for suppressed societies. (You know that you are a second hand citizen when you are encouraged to not use the dominant medical language of physician diagnoses, and then come up with other language which can be used by nurses, defining these medical diagnoses without using the primary language.) But this is not even about the second hand citizen argument..... ladies and gentlemen, we cannot continue to be set against each other this way. The difference between being sent into battle without appropriate armaments, and being sent into this covid battle without proper armaments, is because IT MAY CAUSE US TO HARM, IF NOT DECIMATE OUR OWN NUMBERS, AND ALSO THE PATIENTS WHOM THIS BATTLE IS ABOUT. The charge of the light brigade was written in the time of EMPIRE, and the empire has broken up.
A national emergency where other countries with less gdp and budgets were better prepared for and had their staff equipped with supplies. Your a civilian not a soldier under attack from rockets, where you try to survive, be a bit rational.
Go back and read the original post, because you haven't done that or looked over it.
I said that I supported nurses refusing to care for patients without proper PPE...BUT NO SUPPLY IS ENDLESS and a system can be overwhelmed. So what are you doing to do...just say, "screw this" and leave patient to die?
What blows my mind is the number of people on this board that actually believe...truly believe...that a scenario like that is impossible.
It isn't folks. Talk to anyone who lived through WWII.
Companies just sent 280 million masks overseas. Those shipments should have been stopped and redirected to our facilities. Trump still hasn't released the supplies promised by the Pentagon. 1000s of ventilators apparently don't work because Trump let the maintenance contract expire last year. He didn't accept the tests from the WHO months ago, and is still delaying testing around every corner.
It appears that it is not just an accident that we dont have equipment. It looks like a result of precisely calculated moves by the White House to make things worse than they need to be.
Face it. We can work at a big hospital for years with loyalty, dedication and sacrifice, but they have rarely been on our side. If they have to bid more to get the same supplies that used to cost a lot less, well that is what they should do. We are the ones thrown under the bus through all this. Thus, I wouldn't mind if a nurse doesn't want to risk hurting themselves or their families or patients by exposing themselves intentionally to the virus. Kudos to those who risk it, but kudos to the ones who don't. Who am I to tell them what to do? Who am I to tell on them if they don't agree with me?
I don't disagree with anything you said at all...but how is that the patient's fault?
The current healthcare system has ABSOLUTELY and without question...failed nurses and all frontline staff. But we have to face the fact that there may be a day when the system is overwhelmed and you can't demand what doesn't exist...so you have to decide...are you going to walk away or not? Who gets to decide which nurses walk away and which ones must stay?
A respirator shall be provided to each employee when such equipment is necessary to protect the health of such employee. The employer shall provide the respirators which are applicable and suitable for the purpose intended. The employer shall be responsible for the establishment and maintenance of a respiratory protection program, which shall include the requirements outlined in paragraph (c) of this section. The program shall cover each employee required by this section to use a respirator.
It actually isn't. See the problem with your post is OSHA isn't in the PPE manufacturing business. So if more PPE is needed one day than is possible to manufacture...then the above regulation holds no weight.
Jory where the hell where you doing compressions splashing blood around that you couldn't grab a pair of gloves? If you say battlefield I'll understand, but I've worked ICU and ED my whole career and never went in bare, just saying. I'm not a soldier. I am a good nurse. I did sign up to risk my health for my job, I did not sign up to risk my unborn baby's.
Jory where the hell where you doing compressions splashing blood around that you couldn't grab a pair of gloves? If you say battlefield I'll understand, but I've worked ICU and ED my whole career and never went in bare, just saying. I'm not a soldier. I am a good nurse. I did sign up to risk my health for my job, I did not sign up to risk my unborn baby's.
No damn where! You will quickly learn to ignore that person because they're always THAT person that has these spectacular war stories but never been in battle. No matter what is said, they always have a negative connotation.
Sadly too any of the unions don't want to bother with the smaller hospitals. Not enough nurses to pay dues into the union pocket. I've worked at a few that were like that.
When a hospital is not unionized administration gets away will all sorts of abuses. I think of the thousands of hours of pay I didn't get for missed breaks and meals that I didn't dare claim. It would have reflected badly on my manager and myself for poor organizational skills. No raise for you!
I did appreciate the Christmas bonuses though. When I was working in an ER in Silicon Valley many of my friends were getting bonuses which were typically between 10 and 20K. I got a coffee mug shaped like a vertebrae.
I think the CEC was wrong to advise nurses to use cloth scarves and such. The more recent use seems OK
Quote
CDC Recommendation Regarding the Use of Cloth Face Coverings, Especially in Areas of Significant Community-Based Transmission
... CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission...
Orion81RN
962 Posts
This! One nurse decides to go. One decides to stay. Who is right? Probably both of them. I think it is a very nuanced topic.
I personally think I would have a more selfless attitude if the proper PPE whole fiasco were completely out of the hospitals' and governments' control. But they KNEW a pandemic was inevitable and decided the risk (our lives) was worth it. (Bc we prove to them over and over and over again that we will take it bc of personalities we see on here ?)