What should hospitals do about PPE?

[ThomasB]

Hey fellow HCWs,

Obviously theres a great shortage of N95 masks worldwide which has forced people to be creative from reusing PPE past manufacturer recommendations to using plastic ziploc bags as face protection.

At this point, shouldn't hospital has access to emergency federal funds to pay for any forms of PPE? I was able to buy some masks on kn95supply.com before they got out of stock and even managed to get my Supply Chains Officer to buy 1000 masks for the department. Just wanted to pass along since I could vouch for their quality. Not the cheap disposable kind so thats good.

Maybe we can rally together for a petition for some kind of federal recognition? Just dreaming for adequate attention ?

[lifelearningrn, BSN, RN]

Heads should be rolling for the lack of preparation hospitals across the country are guilty of. Every single hospital should have had a stockpile of PPE for emergency epidemics.

At the very least, they should have seen the writing on the wall in January, when China shut down. The fact that everyone sat on their hands and did nothing to prepare shows just how little administrators

care about the health of their patients and staff.

[MsJenn_The_RN]

I actually just got an updated e-mail about how we're going about providing PPE now. N95's, surgical masks, face shields, isolation gowns, and cleaning wipes, as they become/remain available, will be given out on a case by case, as-needed basis. Each n95 mask will be signed out with the employee's badge number. May take up to 24 hours to receive items, and they will "let us know" if they can't get us what we need. This is not a joke, nor a drill. This is an actual e-mail I got. Today. This is life now.