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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNurses are wearing trash bags at one Bay Area hospital facing a protective equipment shortage
Bay Area health care workers are growing desperate for protective medical equipment to treat a growing number of COVID-19 patients, and the situation got bad enough at one Oakland hospital this week that nurses created their own protective equipment by cutting holes in trash bags and placing them over their uniforms.
Nurses on the night shift in the telemetry unit at Highland Hospital in Oakland said they were not given protective gowns when they reported to work Sunday.
Supervisors told them they would have to wear woven, short-sleeved patient gowns, which are not designed to protect people from infectious material, putting them at risk of contracting COVID-19, said John Pearson, an emergency room nurse at Highland and president of the Alameda Health System chapter for the SEIU local 1021 union.
The nurses instead placed trash bags over their bodies, thinking they would be more effective than the patient gowns. Their actions are a troubling sign of how poorly the regions medical professionals are equipped to handle the coronavirus outbreak, which health experts say is bound to worsen in the next two weeks due to an alarming shortage of personal protective equipment, or PPE.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/coronavirus-nurses-are-wearing-trash-bags-at-one-bay-area-hospital-facing-a-protective-equipment-shortage/ar-BB122DOO?li=BBnb4R7
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)Is shitler continuing to send (sell?) PPE overseas? Grrrrrrrr!
Squinch
(50,773 posts)all going to drop from dehydration.
Jesus! This could not have been handled worse, and we haven't seen anything yet.