NYC ER Doctor Fears Being Fired For Speaking Out, 'It's Like Walking Into Chernobyl'
'It’s like walking into Chernobyl’: NYC emergency room doctor fears being fired for speaking out', Raw Story, 4/10/20.
At one New York City hospital, a doctor’s used mask tore as she performed CPR on her infected patient.
In Seattle, a nurse compares walking into her intensive care unit to bathing in COVID-19.
And in St. Louis, a nurse slips her used N95 mask into a paper bag at the end of her shift and prays it’s disinfected properly.
These are scenes playing out in hospitals across the country, based on interviews with over a dozen residents, doctors and nurses who go into work every day feeling unprotected from the disease they’re supposed to treat.
Nearly a month into the declared pandemic, some health care workers say they’re exhausted and burning out from the stress of treating a stream of critically ill patients in an increasingly overstretched health care system. Many are questioning how long they can risk their own health. Some are falling sick themselves, and even dying. In many hospitals, the pandemic has transformed emergency rooms and upended protocols and precautions that workers previously took for granted.
“It’s like walking into Chernobyl without any gear,” said Jacklyn, an ER doctor at a New York City hospital who asked to go by her middle name for fear of being fired over speaking out.
At her hospital, 90% of patients have COVID-19, but health care workers get only one N95 mask every five days.
“We’re constantly breathing in everything that’s aerosolized because of all of the procedures that we’re doing,” the New York City doctor said.
Coronavirus can spread easily through droplets during close interactions such as coughing and talking. It can also stay on some surfaces for days. During certain procedures, the virus becomes aerosolizedand can linger in a room for longer periods. In such cases, health care workers are directed to take “airborne precautions” and wear N95 masks or another kind of respirator.
She said she’s baffled by how unprepared the government and hospitals are for this moment.
The day Jacklyn shows up to the hospital and there are no N95 masks, she said, she’ll refuse to work.
“I’m not on a suicide mission here. I’m not going to do anything that puts my life at risk. What is my daughter going to do without me? What would my husband do without me?” she said...
More, https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/its-like-walking-into-chernobyl-nyc-emergency-room-doctor-fears-being-fired-for-speaking-out/
- *Also: 'Rationing Protective Gear Means Checking On Coronavirus Patients Less Often & That Can Be Deadly'
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/rationing-protective-gear-means-checking-on-coronavirus-patients-less-often-and-that-can-be-deadly/
...In New York City, the epicenter of the virus, the surge in COVID-19 patients has overwhelmed many hospitals, forcing some health care workers to rethink and at times forgo certain essential safeguards. In interviews, doctors and nurses at nine hospitals told ProPublica that to ensure they have enough PPE, like sterile gowns and masks, and to keep themselves from contracting the virus, hospital staff are not consistently providing the level of attention needed, and that lapses in care are imperiling COVID-19 patients, whose health can deteriorate very quickly.
The hospitals themselves insisted this wasn’t so, saying their staff members have enough PPE and asserting that efforts to conserve equipment and protect staff weren’t affecting patient care...
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