SURVEY: Nurses, Are You Prepared for an Encounter with COVID-19?

[tnbutterfly - Mary]

We first started hearing about the Novel Coronavirus in December 2019. It made the news due to the rapid increase in the numbers of individuals in China who became infected with this new disease. As the deadly virus began to spread, affecting those around the globe, including those in the United States, it has become very obvious that controlling the spread of this virus is going to be a very serious challenge. Since it is a new disease, no one has immunity and there is currently no vaccine available.

On March 11, the COVID-19 outbreak was characterized by the World Health Organization as a Pandemic. As such, it is critical that all members of the health care teams have the appropriate knowledge, training, and personal protective equipment to effectively and safely provide care to patients, without unprotected exposure to themselves.

As a potential first responder to fight this virus, have you received the training needed to assess and care for potential and confirmed COVID-19 patients in your place of work? Do you have adequate equipment? Does your place of employment have a clear and up-to-date protocol for responding to COVID-19? Or are communications confusing or even nonexistent?

Do you feel prepared?

Please take this survey so we can see how nurses from around the globe feel regarding the level of preparedness to fight and stop the spread of this threat to public health. After taking the survey, please return here and share what preparations and precautions your healthcare facility and you personally are taking. We would love to hear from you.

Direct link to survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CT77WW7

CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19): We Want to Hear from You

[Cactuslover]

On 3/19/2020 at 11:51 PM, Rose_Queen said:

Most likely your school is busy trying to figure out how they’re going to get the current students what they need. There is a limited number of clinical spots- you can’t send more students than there are spots. They need to figure out how to proceed with the present before they can consider the future right now.

Students aren’t help- please get that idea out of your head. Precepting takes a lot of energy and nurses are stretched to the breaking point without having to slow down to give students extra time to complete what they can do in half the time. PPE is in short supply- students make that shortage worse by using supplies. As for preparing for real life situations, you learn to become a nurse when you have that license in hand and are in orientation, not when you are a student.

So students in their final semester of clinicals are of no help to a hospital? That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve heard all week. After year one of a nursing associates degree, students are eligible to sit for their LPN license and many do. I pity any PCT’s who help you in your time of need because you are so ungrateful

[caliotter3]

1 hour ago, Cactuslover said:

So students in their final semester of clinicals are of no help to a hospital? That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve heard all week. After year one of a nursing associates degree, students are eligible to sit for their LPN license and many do. I pity any PCT’s who help you in your time of need because you are so ungrateful

And I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned that power charging students through to graduation leads to them obtaining licenses and entering the nurse workforce pipeline. There they will get their on the job training so much earlier than if they sit on their rears at home stagnating in “student interrupted status” limbo.

[NurseBlaq]

One of AL BON emergency rules newly adopted to deal with Covid-19:

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The rule establishes a delegation program, where nurses may delegate nursing tasks to individuals who are currently enrolled in an approved nursing education program and employed as unlicensed assistive personnel in licensed healthcare facilities, with specific limits.

Nursing students are being utilized in AL if they're already employed by healthcare facilities.

Other new emergency rules:

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• The fee for reactivation of a retired nursing license within two years of retirement is reduced from $600.00 to $250.00 for the duration of the public health emergency.
• CE requirements for reinstatement of a lapsed license or reactivation of a retired license are suspended for the duration of the public health emergency.
• Advanced practice nurses are granted a 15-day grace period from the date of expiration of national certification for the Board to receive primary source verification from the certifying agency, provided that the certification did not actually expire.
• All temporary permits with valid terms of fewer than 180 days are extended to 180 days.

Sent via email today from AL BON to all licensed professionals in the state of AL.

[Walti, LPN, LVN, RN, EMT-I]

I was just wondering about possible supply disruptions with meds. This can cause huge problems and I'm wondering about those on anti-depressants. It might sound counter productive to consider getting folks off of these medications when the world has so much to be depressed about. The problem as I see it is folks suddenly finding out that the pharmacies don't have their medications and don't know when they will be available. As many of you know, suddenly stopping an anti-depressant can lead to an increased depression. They need to be tapered off.

My entry into this profession was as an Army medic in Vietnam. I do have PTSD as a result of it. A road trip left me without my medication after I forgot to pack it. After 5 days without it I was despondent. My concern is that many people close to the edge will become suicidal if their medication abruptly stops.

Now is a good time to start talking about his with any providers you might know. I will be talking with those I know. It can be as simple as getting them a month ahead on the medication and giving them a schedule to taper with if need be.

[mom_e_bizcut, LPN]

I work at an MAT clinic and we did have a disaster plan in place including response for a pandemic event. Strangely the plan for pandemic was not as detailed as that in place for natural or man-made disasters, though most of the steps could be crossed over if necessary. Around this time last year, in an interesting twist of fate I had grown quite bored with the nurses usual go to training of "infection control" & "bloodborn pathogens" that (granted was still very important but that I'd done 4 other times with my coworkers), and decided to do an in-service training on disaster preparedness which had not been done previously. The policy was there and some general steps and safety measures had been discussed of course but not the more specific considerations that come with possible treatment interrupting emergency events. Our exposure to this virus is of course not nearly as risky as for nurses in the hospitals, but our company sent out info on recommended precautions to reduce exposure to staff and patients, mostly things I'd already been doing like surface disinfection, but also removing some chairs to ensure patient distancing from one another while waiting, making special dosing arrangements for pregnant and immunocompromised patients and for ill patients so they're not exposing others. The training I'd done on disaster preparedness familiarized staff with the authorized changes to clinic activities and patient dosing during an emergency event, such as loosened DEA criteria for take-home doses allowing for temporary phase increases and decreased patient traffic in clinic (although these are still stiff and there are of course patients who don't qualify). There are also some very slight/careful changes to patient confidentiality regs in urgent situations, approval for counseling sessions by phone rather than in person and agreements with other MAT Facilities as alternate dosing for patients if ours could not be staffed due to illness. I'm sure my experience with preparedness does not compare to the challenges for nurses on the front lines with covid-19, But keeping our patients safe and educated about the virus will hopefully help reduce the number of patients they are dealing with. Not to mention that the last thing they need is for the hospital to be bombarded with patients suffering with opiate addiction because they're unable to access crucial treatment.

[Walti, LPN, LVN, RN, EMT-I]

My wife was wondering how the population dense country of India was doing with the outbreak. I went to a site called the Indian council of Medical Research. I seems that India is recommending that all high risk people should be getting Choloroquine. High risk includes health care workers involved in the care of suspected or confirmed cases of Covid-19. Also asymptomatic household contacts of lab confirmed contacts.

The protocol has been approved by the Drug Controller General of India for restricted use in emergency situations.

The article goes on to say that healthcare workers should continue all normal measures for respiratory care such as distancing, hand washing and PPE use.

India has a hell of a lot of smart doctors, I'm wondering if we should be following their lead here. Or maybe we should do a control group among healthcare workers. Half get a placebo and half get Choloroquine. That way we can see if more nurses die in one group. Anyone think it is a good plan?

[NurseBlaq]

This will tell you how the world is doing and you can click links to each country. In the USA you can click the links to each state, sources of the information is linked in as well. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[terri visco]

we're supposed to distance ourselves..LOL. ya can't if you work ltc. we have gowns and gloves but no, any type of masks. and we're taking admissions from hospitals. spent all day in and out of a new admission's room from last night. No resp issues that I could assess at the moment. Lots of other contact isolation issues though. God bless her, nice lady. Should I consider myself exposed? Who's protecting me?

[NurseBlaq]

Have y'all seen this?

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500 patients in northern Italian hospitals are receiving right now respirators, produced by hacked scuba gear that was shipped by Decathlon! This is incredibly cool. Big hugs to Isinnova and their team, Massimo Temporelli, Fablab Milano and all the people involved in this! Big time respect. This is the second successful project after replacing the missing pieces of existing ICU ventilators last week. On the Isinnova website, anybody can connect and learn how to follow the same practice in their own country.

https://dgiluz-wordpress-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/dgiluz.wordpress.com/2020/03/23/its-working/amp/

[terri visco]

I'll say it again. We have no masks of any type but the powers that be think it's OK to take admissions from hospitals who have active cases. Case and point. we got an admission last nite of who I had to spend extensive time with today. I had gown and gloves due to contact isolation. LOL. My point? We should not take admissions in ltc if we can't protect ourselves. A tent outside of the hospital will work, until a negative test is confirmed.

[Ana m]

On 3/14/2020 at 10:27 AM, DeeAngel said:

Call the CDC, the local media and the local health dept...that’s what you’re supposed to do.

Yeah and get fired. The cdc, the local media know very well that there is a dire shortage of PPE and they just say thank the healthcare workers blah blah blah

[cartwrk]

On 3/15/2020 at 8:44 AM, toomuchbaloney said:

Government uses money to protect and benefit the people.

I think I disagree with this statement. I trust the government ...um...not at all. And the bigger the government, the less I trust it.

It's just too bad that healthcare has become commercialized, and a huge reason it's so expensive now.