Category Archives: Nurses

Few U.S. adults say they’ve been diagnosed with coronavirus, but more than a quarter know someone who has

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Employer-Based Health Insurance, Essential Businesses, Essential Workers, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Healthcare Providers, High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, High Prices, High Risk Employees, Mortality, Nurses, Nursing Home, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Physician, Preexisting Conditions, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Determinants of Health, Social Distancing, Surprise Bills, Underinsured, Unemployment, Uninsured • Leave a comment

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/26/few-u-s-adults-say-theyve-been-diagnosed-with-coronavirus-but-more-than-a-quarter-know-someone-who-has/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=ef5ba73bf3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_05_29_05_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-ef5ba73bf3-400197657

28% of U.S. adults say they know someone diagnosed with COVID-19 ...

Relatively few Americans say they have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, but many more believe they may have been infected or say they personally know someone who has been diagnosed.

Only 2% of U.S. adults say they have been officially diagnosed with COVID-19 by a health care provider, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. And 2% say they have taken a blood test that showed they have COVID-19 antibodies, an indication that they previously had the coronavirus. But many more Americans (14%) say they are “pretty sure” they had COVID-19, despite not getting an official diagnosis. And nearly four-in-ten (38%) say they’ve taken their temperature to check if they might have the disease.

Although few Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19 themselves, many more say they know someone with a positive diagnosis. More than one-in-four U.S. adults (28%) say they personally know someone who has been diagnosed by a health care provider as having COVID-19. A smaller share of Americans (20%) say they know someone who has been hospitalized or who has died as a result of having the coronavirus.

Some groups are more likely than others to report personal experiences with COVID-19. For instance, black adults are the most likely to personally know someone who has been hospitalized or died as a result of the disease. One-third of black Americans (34%) know someone who has been hospitalized or died, compared with 19% of Hispanics and 18% of white adults. Black Americans (32%) are also slightly more likely than Hispanic adults (26%) to know someone diagnosed with COVID-19. Public health studies have found black Americans are disproportionately dying or requiring hospitalization as a result of the coronavirus.

28% of U.S. adults say they know someone diagnosed with COVID-19 ...

Areas in the northeastern United States have recorded some of the highest rates of coronavirus cases and fatalities, and this is reflected in the Center’s survey. About four-in-ten adults living in the Northeast (42%) say they personally know someone diagnosed with COVID-19, significantly more than among adults living in any other region. People living in the Northeast (31%) are also the most likely to know someone who has been hospitalized or died as a result of the disease.

One aspect of personal risk for exposure to the coronavirus is whether someone is employed in a setting where they must have frequent contact with other people, such as at a grocery store, hospital or construction site. Given the potential for the spread of the coronavirus within households, risk to individuals is also higher if other members of the household are employed in similar settings. Among people who are currently employed full-time, 35% are working in a job with frequent public contact. Among those working part-time, almost half work (48%) in such a setting. For those living in a household with other adults, 35% report that at least one of those individuals is working in a job that requires frequent contact with other people.

Taken together, nearly four-in-ten Americans (38%) have this type of exposure – either currently working in a job that requires contact with others, living in a household with others whose jobs require contact, or both.

Hispanics (at 48%) are more likely than either blacks (38%) or whites (35%) to have this type of personal or household exposure. An earlier Center analysis of government data found Hispanic adults were slightly more likely to work in service-sector jobs that require customer interaction, and that are at higher risk of layoffs as a result of the virus. In fact, the current Center survey found Hispanics were among the most likely to have experienced pay cuts or job losses due to the coronavirus outbreak.

28% of U.S. adults say they know someone diagnosed with COVID-19 ...

Interpersonal exposure in the workplace is also more widespread among younger adults. And there is a 10 percentage point difference between upper- and lower-income Americans in exposure, with lower-income adults more likely to work in situations where they have to interact with the public, or to live with people who do.

Health experts warn that COVID-19 is particularly dangerous to people who have underlying medical conditions. In the survey, one-third of adults say they have such a condition. Among this group, nearly six-in-ten (58%) say that the coronavirus outbreak is a major threat to their personal health. Among those who do not report having an underlying medical condition, just 28% see the outbreak as a major threat to their health. Americans who have an underlying health condition are also more likely than those who do not to say they’ve taken their temperature to check if they might have COVID-19 (47% vs. 33% of those without a health condition).

Self-reports of an underlying health condition vary greatly by age. Among those ages 18 to 29, just 16% say they have a condition; this rises steadily with age to 56% among those 65 and older. Whites are a little more likely than blacks and Hispanics to report having a health condition, but both blacks (at 54%) and Hispanics (52%) are far more likely than whites (32%) to say that the coronavirus outbreak is “a major threat” to their health.

 

 

 

 

100,000 Lives Lost to COVID-19. What Did They Teach Us?

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Emergency Preparedness, First Responders, Front Lines, Health Policy, Healthcare Providers, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Nurses, Nursing Home, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Physician, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Safety Net Hospitals, Safety-Net Providers, Scientists, Sick Leave, Social Determinants of Health, Social Distancing, Supply Chain, Vulnerable Populations • Leave a comment

https://www.propublica.org/article/100000-lives-lost-to-covid-19-what-did-they-teach-us?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter&utm_content=feature

May 27 data: Four new Utah COVID-19 deaths as US count tops ...

Each person who has died of COVID-19 was somebody’s everything. Even as we mourn for those we knew, cry for those we loved and consider those who have died uncounted, the full tragedy of the pandemic hinges on one question: How do we stop the next 100,000?

The United States has now recorded 100,000 deaths due to the coronavirus.

It’s a moment to collectively grieve and reflect.

Even as we mourn for those we knew, cry for those we loved and consider also those who have died uncounted, I hope that we can also resolve to learn more, test better, hold our leaders accountable and better protect our citizens so we do not have to reach another grim milestone.

Through public records requests and other reporting, ProPublica has found example after example of delays, mistakes and missed opportunities. The CDC took weeks to fix its faulty test. In Seattle, 33,000 fans attended a soccer match, even after the top local health official said he wanted to end mass gatherings. Houston went ahead with a livestock show and rodeo that typically draws 2.5 million people, until evidence of community spread shut it down after eight days. Nebraska kept a meatpacking plant open that health officials wanted to shut down, and cases from the plant subsequently skyrocketed. And in New York, the epicenter of the pandemic, political infighting between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio hampered communication and slowed decision making at a time when speed was critical to stop the virus’ exponential spread.

COVID-19 has also laid bare many long-standing inequities and failings in America’s health care system. It is devastating, but not surprising, to learn that many of those who have been most harmed by the virus are also Americans who have long suffered from historical social injustices that left them particularly susceptible to the disease.

This massive loss of life wasn’t inevitable. It wasn’t simply unfortunate and regrettable. Even without a vaccine or cure, better mitigation measures could have prevented infections from happening in the first place; more testing capacity could have allowed patients to be identified and treated earlier.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not over, far from it.

At this moment, the questions we need to ask are: How do we prevent the next 100,000 deaths from happening? How do we better protect our most vulnerable in the coming months? Even while we mourn, how can we take action, so we do not repeat this horror all over again?

Here’s what we’ve learned so far.

Though we’ve long known about infection control problems in nursing homes, COVID-19 got in and ran roughshod.

From the first weeks of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, when the virus tore through the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington, nursing homes and long-term care facilities have emerged as one of the deadliest settings. As of May 21, there have been around 35,000 deaths of staff and residents in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, according to the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.

Yet the facilities have continued to struggle with basic infection control. Federal inspectors have found homes with insufficient staff and a lack of personal protective equipment. Others have failed to maintain social distancing among residents, according to inspection reports ProPublica reviewed. Desperate family members have had to become detectives and activists, one even going as far as staging a midnight rescue of her loved one as the virus spread through a Queens, New York, assisted living facility.

What now? The risk to the elderly will not decrease as time goes by — more than any other population, they will need the highest levels of protection until the pandemic is over. The CEO of the industry’s trade group told my colleague Charles Ornstein: “Just like hospitals, we have called for help. In our case, nobody has listened.” More can be done to protect our nursing home and long term care population. This means regular testing of both staff and residents, adequate protective gear and a realistic way to isolate residents who test positive.

Racial disparities in health care are pervasive in medicine, as they have been in COVID-19 deaths.

African Americans have contracted and died of the coronavirus at higher rates across the country. This is due to myriad factors, including more limited access to medical care as well as environmental, economic and political factors that put them at higher risk of chronic conditions. When ProPublica examined the first 100 recorded victims of the coronavirus in Chicago, we found that 70 were black. African Americans make up 30% of the city’s population.

What now? States should make sure that safety-net hospitals, which serve a large portion of low-income and uninsured patients regardless of their ability to pay, and hospitals in neighborhoods that serve predominantly black communities, are well-supplied and sufficiently staffed during the crisis. More can also be done to encourage African American patients to not delay seeking care, even when they have “innocent symptoms” like a cough or low-grade fever, especially when they suffer other health conditions like diabetes.

Racial disparities go beyond medicine, to other aspects of the pandemic. Data shows that black people are already being disproportionately arrested for social distancing violations, a measure that can undercut public health efforts and further raise the risk of infection, especially when enforcement includes time in a crowded jail.

Essential workers had little choice but to work during COVID-19, but adequate safeguards weren’t put in place to protect them.

We’ve known from the beginning there are some measures that help protect us from the virus, such as physical distancing. Yet millions of Americans haven’t been able to heed that advice, and have had no choice but to risk their health daily as they’ve gone to work shoulder-to-shoulder in meat-packing plants, rung up groceries while being forbidden to wear gloves, or delivered the mail. Those who are undocumented live with the additional fear of being caught by immigration authorities if they go to a hospital for testing or treatment.

What now? Research has shown that there’s a much higher risk of transmission in enclosed spaces than outdoors, so providing good ventilation, adequate physical distancing, and protective gear as appropriate for workers in indoor spaces is critical for safety. We also now know that patients are likely most infectious right before or at the time when symptoms start appearing, so if workplaces are generous about their sick leave policies, workers can err on the side of caution if they do feel unwell, and not have to choose between their livelihoods and their health. It’s also important to have adequate testing capacity, so infections can be caught before they turn into a large outbreak.

Frontline health care workers were not given adequate PPE and were sometimes fired for speaking up about it.

While health workers have not, thankfully, been dying at conspicuously higher rates, they continue to be susceptible to the virus due to their work. The national scramble for ventilators and personal protective equipment has exposed the just-in-time nature of hospitals’ inventories: Nurses across the country have had to work with expired N95 masks, or no masks at all. Health workers have been suspended, or put on unpaid leave, because they didn’t see eye to eye with their administrators on the amount of protective gear they needed to keep themselves safe while caring for patients.

First responders — EMTs, firefighters and paramedics — are often forgotten when it comes to funding, even though they are the first point of contact with sick patients. The lack of a coherent system nationwide meant that some first responders felt prepared, while others were begging for masks at local hospitals.

What now? As states reopen, it will be important to closely track hospital capacity, and if cases rise and threaten their medical systems’ ability to care for patients, governments will need to be ready to pause or even dial back reopening measures. It should go without saying that adequate protective gear is a must. I also hope that hospital administrators are thinking about mental health care for their staffs. Doctors and nurses have told us of the immense strain of caring for patients whom they don’t know how to save, while also worrying about getting sick themselves, or carrying the virus home to their loved ones. Even “heroes” need supplies and support.

What we still have to learn:

There continue to be questions on which data is lacking, such as the effects of the coronavirus on pregnant women. Without evidence-based research, pregnant women have been left to make decisions on their own, sometimes trying to limit their exposure against their employer’s wishes.

Similarly, there’s a paucity of data on children’s risk level and their role in transmission. While we can confidently say that it’s rare for children to get very ill if they do get infected, there’s not as much information on whether children are as infectious as adults. Answering that question would not just help parents make decisions (Can I let my kid go to day care when we live with Grandma?) but also help officials make evidence-based decisions on how and when to reopen schools.

There’s some research I don’t want to rush. Experts say the bar for evidence should be extremely high when it comes to a vaccine’s safety and benefit. It makes sense that we might be willing to use a therapeutic with less evidence on critically ill patients, knowing that without any intervention, they would soon die. A vaccine, however, is intended to be given to vast numbers of healthy people. So yes, we have to move urgently, but we must still take the time to gather robust data.

Our nation’s leaders have many choices to make in the coming weeks and months. I hope they will heed the advice of scientists, doctors and public health officials, and prioritize the protection of everyone from essential workers to people in prisons and homeless shelters who does not have the privilege of staying home for the duration of the pandemic.

The coronavirus is a wily adversary. We may ultimately defeat it with a vaccine or effective therapeutics. But what we’ve learned from the first 100,000 deaths is that we can save lives with the oldest mitigation tactics in the public health arsenal — and that being slow to act comes with a terrible cost.

I refuse to succumb to fatalism, to just accepting the ever higher death toll as inevitable. I want us to make it harder for this virus to take each precious life from us. And I believe we can.

 

 

 

Administration Killed Rule Designed To Protect Health Workers From Pandemic Like COVID-19

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Coronavirus, Employee Protections, Healthcare Providers, Nurses, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Physician, Public Health, Public Safety • Leave a comment

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/26/862018484/trump-team-killed-rule-designed-to-protect-health-workers-from-pandemic-like-cov?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202020-05-27%20Healthcare%20Dive%20%5Bissue:27567%5D&utm_term=Healthcare%20Dive

Trump Team Killed Rule Designed To Protect Health Workers From ...

When President Trump took office in 2017, his team stopped work on new federal regulations that would have forced the health care industry to prepare for an airborne infectious disease pandemic such as COVID-19. That decision is documented in federal records reviewed by NPR.

“If that rule had gone into effect, then every hospital, every nursing home would essentially have to have a plan where they made sure they had enough respirators and they were prepared for this sort of pandemic,” said David Michaels, who was head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration until January 2017.

There are still no specific federal regulations protecting health care workers from deadly airborne pathogens such as influenza, tuberculosis or the coronavirus. This fact hit home during the last respiratory pandemic, the H1N1 outbreak in 2009. Thousands of Americans died and dozens of health care workers got sick. At least four nurses died.

Studies conducted after the H1N1 crisis found voluntary federal safety guidelines designed to limit the spread of airborne pathogens in medical facilities often weren’t being followed. There were also shortages of personal protective equipment.

“H1N1 made it very clear OSHA did not have adequate standards for airborne transmission and contact transmission, and so we began writing a standard to do that,” Michaels said.

HIV/AIDS rule set the standard for protecting workers

OSHA experts were confident new airborne infectious disease regulations would make hospitals and nursing homes safer when future pandemics hit. That’s because similar rules had already been created for bloodborne pathogens such as Ebola and hepatitis.

Those rules, implemented during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, forced the health care industry to adopt safety plans and buy more equipment designed to protect staff and patients.

But making a new infectious disease regulation, affecting much of the American health care system, is time-consuming and contentious. It requires lengthy consultation with scientists, doctors and other state and federal regulatory agencies as well as the nursing home and hospital industries that would be forced to implement the standard.

Federal records reviewed by NPR show OSHA went step by step through that process for six years, and by early 2016 the new infectious disease rule was ready. The Obama White House formally added it to a list of regulations scheduled to be implemented in 2017.

Then came the presidential election.

An emphasis on deregulation

In the spring of 2017, the Trump team formally stripped OSHA’s airborne infectious disease rule from the regulatory agenda. NPR could find no indication the new administration had specific policy concerns about the infectious disease rules.

Instead, the decision appeared to be part of a wider effort to cut regulations and bureaucratic oversight.

“Earlier this year we set a target of adding zero new regulatory costs onto the American economy,” Trump said in December 2017. “As a result, the never-ending growth of red tape in America has come to a sudden, screeching and beautiful halt.”

The impact on the federal effort to protect health care workers from diseases such as COVID-19 was immediate.

“The infectious disease standard was put on the back burner. Work stopped,” said Michaels, now a professor at George Washington University.

A medical worker is assisted into personal protective equipment on May 8 before stepping into a patient’s room in the COVID-19 intensive care unit at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Elaine Thompson/AP

A deadly escalation of the H1N1 crisis

This spring, hospitals and nursing homes found themselves facing much of the same crisis they experienced during the H1N1 outbreak, with many facilities unprepared and unequipped. Only this time the scale was larger and deadlier.

The federal government reports that at least 43,000 front-line health care workers have gotten sick, many infected, while caring for COVID-19 patients in facilities where personal protective equipment was being rationed.

“Even just a few months ago, I couldn’t have imagined that I would have been on a Zoom call reading out the names of registered nurses who have died on the front lines of a pandemic,” said Bonnie Castillo, who heads the National Nurses United union.

“The memorial was not only about grief. It was also about anger.”

OSHA’s infectious disease rule debated in Washington

Castillo said Congress should immediately implement the infectious disease regulations shelved by the Trump administration as an emergency rule before a second wave of the coronavirus hits.

“Which obviously would mandate that employers have the highest level of PPE, not the lowest,” she said.

Democrats in the House of Representatives passed a bill in mid-May that would do so, but the Republican-controlled Senate has blocked the measure, and the White House still opposes the rules.

The Trump administration hasn’t responded to NPR’s repeated inquiries about the infectious disease rule. But in a briefing call with lawmakers this month, the current head of OSHA, Loren Sweatt, argued enough rules are already in place to protect workers.

“We have mandatory standards related to personal protective equipment and bloodborne pathogens and sanitation standards,” Sweatt said in a recording provided to NPR. “We have existing standards that can address this area.”

The hospital industry also opposes the new safety rules. Nancy Foster with the American Hospital Association said voluntary guidelines for airborne pandemics are adequate.

“You’re right; they’re not regulations, but they are the guidance that we want to follow,” Foster said. “They set forth the expectation for infection control, so in a sense they’re just like regulations.”

But the infectious disease standard would have required the health care industry to do far more. It sets out specific standards for planning and training. It would also have forced facilities to stockpile personal protective equipment to handle “surges” of sick patients such as the ones seen with COVID-19.

NPR also found the lack of fixed regulations allowed the Trump administration to relax worker safety guidelines. Federal agencies did so repeatedly this spring as COVID-19 spread and shortages of personal protective equipment worsened.

As a consequence, hospitals could say they were meeting federal guidelines while requiring doctors and nurses to reuse masks and protective gowns after exposure to sick patients.

 

 

 

HCA asks union to abandon wage increases this year

Posted on by • Posted in Economic Crisis, Economic Stimulus, Employee Benefits, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, For-Profit, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Spend Management, Labor Union, Medicare, Nurses, Nurses Union, Paycheck Protection Program, The CARES Act • Leave a comment

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hr/hca-asks-union-to-abandon-wage-increases-this-year.html?utm_medium=email

HCA revenue beats the hospital chain's expectations in 2019

A union representing more than 150,000 registered nurses in hundreds of U.S. hospitals is disputing with Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare regarding pay and benefits.

National Nurses United said HCA is demanding that the union choose between an undetermined number of layoffs and no 401(k) match for this year or no layoffs and no nurse pay increases for the rest of the year, according to ABC affiliate Kiii TV.

HCA Healthcare, which to date has avoided layoffs due to the pandemic, told Becker’s Hospital Review it is asking the union to give up their demand for wage increases this year, just as nonunion employees have. HCA executive leadership, corporate and division colleagues and hospital executives have also taken pay cuts.  

The union said it takes issue with having to make this choice given HCA’s profits in the last decade, the additional funding the for-profit hospital operator received from the federal government’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, and additional Medicare loans.

“It is outrageous for HCA to use the cover of the pandemic to swell its massive profits at the expense of its dedicated caregivers and the patients who will also be harmed by cuts in nursing staff,” Malinda Markowitz, RN, California Nurses Association/National Nurses United president, said in a news release.

HCA pointed to the pandemic pay program it implemented and recently extended through at least the end of June that allows employees who are called off or affected by a facility closure and cannot be redeployed to receive 70 percent of their base pay.

“It is surprising and frankly disappointing that unions would demand pay raises for their members and may reject the continuation of a generous pay program that is providing continued paychecks for more the 100,000 colleagues,” HCA said in a statement. “The goal of HCA Healthcare’s pandemic pay program is to keep our caregivers employed and receiving paychecks at a time when hospitals throughout the country are experiencing significant declines in patient volume and there is not enough work for them.”

HCA said more than 16,000 union members have participated in the pandemic pay program, even though it is not part of their contract. 

 

 

 

 

Cartoon – The Coronavirus War

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Cartoon, Clinical Testing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Front Lines, Health Policy, Healthcare Providers, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, Nurses, Pandemic, Pass the Buck, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Physician, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Supply Chain • Leave a comment

Coronavirus first responders now the frontline in two wars: Darcy ...

I’m a nurse in a Covid-19 unit. My hospital’s leaders frighten me more than the virus.

Posted on by • Posted in Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Failure, Frustration, Health System, Healthcare Providers, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Leadership Cares, Leadership Conversation, Leadership Culture, Leadership Listens, Nurses, Nurses Union, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Physician, Talent Management, Transparency • Leave a comment

I’m a nurse in a Covid-19 unit. My hospital’s leaders frighten me more than the virus

As a nurse, my hospital's leaders frighten me more than Covid-19 ...

I’ve been a nurse for almost 10 years, working mainly on a hospital’s cardiac floor.

One day I was assigned to a makeshift intensive care unit that had previously been an observation unit for highly stable patients waiting for test results. Many of the patients in this new Covid-19 unit were intubated, with ventilators breathing for them.

When I started the shift, a trained intensive care unit nurse was crying in the supply closet. She was overwhelmed and anxious, hadn’t worked on her familiar unit in weeks, and had been told that her next shift would be an overnight one — and she had no choice in the matter.

Many of us don’t have a choice. We are assigned to work in unfamiliar units, with patients who are outside our expertise, without any training. We’re lost.

Most shifts start with nurses crying. Most shifts end that way too.

“It’s out of our hands,” we hear from hospital administrators.

Nurses who typically work in outpatient clinics are being sent to inpatient floors and assigned to care for patients who are acutely ill. Many haven’t worked at the bedside in decades. The number of patients who have fallen in this unit has risen exponentially in the past two weeks due to lack of training of outpatient nurses.

I wonder if the patients know their nurses are overwhelmed, and that many of them are scared they’ll make a deadly mistake.

“Everyone is out of their comfort zone, just hang in there,” we’re told.

Doctors have been instructed not to enter patients’ rooms unless they must as a way to minimize their exposure to the virus that causes Covid-19 while nurses go from one room to the next, medicating, bathing, turning, and comforting their patients without changing their uncomfortable personal protective equipment, since supplies are limited. This work can take hours. It is not uncommon for nurses to go all day without drinking water or eating because that would mean removing our protective gear.

During one of my shifts, a doctor at my hospital posted several TikToks he made while sitting at the nurses’ station of a busy Covid-19 unit as nurses whispered words of encouragement to patients clinging to life supported by ventilators. Over our words and the hum of the ventilators, I wondered if our patients heard music coming from this doctor’s TikToks.

“We hear your concerns, but there’s nothing we can do,” doesn’t reassure or encourage us.

One day as I worked in the makeshift ICU, one of the hospital’s leaders went floor to floor making an important delivery. She approached our nursing station in her crisp professional attire and fresh disposition, and proudly delivered a supply of makeup-removing wipes. She told us to use the wipes to clean our faces before putting on our N95 masks so we could reuse the masks later, then moved on to the next nurses’ station without asking how our staff was doing or if we needed anything. I wonder if she had noticed the nurse crying in the supply closet.

“That’s above us, we don’t make those decisions,” is passing the buck at its worst.

Excuses from hospital administrators seem to have punctuated every shift for the past six weeks. The praise and applause from hospital leadership only go so far.

I can read in my co-workers’ faces and hear from the stories they tell that the biggest danger we face is not Covid-19. It’s the hospital’s administration.

Leadership is failing us, even as we stand firm in not failing our patients. We care for your loved ones, Covid-19 or not, monitor their vital signs, give them medications, rub lotion on their backs, help them to the bathroom, and brush their hair. We FaceTime their families from our personal phones so they can see their loved ones fighting to live. This is important care that nurses are proud to provide.

The narrative is simple. Nursing, and nurses, are not valued. It’s a shame, and maybe even a deadly shame, that hospital leaders don’t care about nurses like we care for our patients.

 

 

 

Home of the Brave

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Accountability, Achievement, America's Essential Hospitals, Brave, Bravery, Coronavirus, Cowardice, Credibility, Domestic Terrorism, Essential Businesses, Essential Workers, Ethics, Free Speech, Freedom, Freedom of the Press, Health Policy, Healthcare Providers, Infection Control, Infectious Virus, Judgement, Mission, Mission Critical, Mortality, Nurses, Oath to do no Harm, Pandemic, Partisanship, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Physician, Public Debate, Public Discourse, Public Good, Public Safety, Quarantine, Quick Fix, Rational Thinking, Recognition, Safety-Net Providers, Selflessness, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

Image may contain: 8 peopleImage may contain: 8 people

U.S. coronavirus updates

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Emergency Preparedness, Employee Benefits, Employee Furlough, Employee Layoffs, Employee Pay Cuts, Employer-Based Health Insurance, False Hope, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Healthcare Providers, Intensive Care (ICU), Job Market, Job Search, Job Security, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, Nurses, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Physician, Preexisting Conditions, Protest, Public Health, Public Safety, Social Distancing, Surprise Bills, Uncertainty, Underinsured, Unemployment, Unemployment Insurance, Uninsured, Unrealistic Expectations, Vaccination, Vaccine, Ventilators • Leave a comment

https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-west-virginia-first-case-ac32ce6d-5523-4310-a219-7d1d1dcb6b44.html

Coronavirus outbreak is level of public pain we haven't seen in ...

 

The pandemic is a long way from over, and its impact on our daily lives, information ecosystem, politics, cities and health care will last even longer.

The big picture: The novel coronavirus has infected more than 939,000 people and killed over 54,000 in the U.S., Johns Hopkins data shows. More than 105,000 Americans have recovered from the virus as of Sunday.

Lockdown measures: Demonstrators gathered in Florida, Texas and Louisiana Saturday to protest stay-at-home orders designed to protect against the spread of COVID-19, following a week of similar rallies across the U.S.

  • 16 states have released formal reopening plans, Vice President Mike Pence said at Thursday’s White House briefing. Several Southern states including South Carolina have already begun reopening their economies.
  • Alaska, Oklahoma and Georgia reopened some non-essential businesses Friday. President Trump said Wednesday he “strongly” disagrees with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on the move.
  • California’s stay-at-home orders and business restrictions will remain in place, Gov. Gavin Newsom made clear at a Wednesday news briefing. But some local authorities reopened beaches in Southern California Saturday.
  • New York recorded its third-straight day of fewer coronavirus deaths Friday. Still, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he’s not willing to reopen the state, citing CDC guidance that states need two weeks of flat or declining numbers.

Catch up quick: Deborah Birx said Sunday that it “bothers” her that the news cycle is still focused on Trump’s comments about disinfectants possibly treating coronavirus, arguing that “we’re missing the bigger pieces” about how Americans can defeat the virus.

  • Anthony Fauci said Saturday the U.S. is testing roughly 1.5 million to 2 million people a week. “We probably should get up to twice that as we get into the next several weeks, and I think we will,” he said.
  • The number of sailors aboard the USS Kidd to test positive for the coronavirus has risen from 18 Friday to 33, the U.S. Navy said Saturday. It’s the second major COVID-19 outbreak on a U.S. naval vessel, after the USS Theodore Roosevelt, where a total of 833 crew members tested positive, per the Navy’s latest statement.
  • The first person known to have the coronavirus when they died was killed by a heart attack “due to COVID-19 infection” on Feb. 6, autopsy results obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle on Saturday show.
  • Some young coronavirus patients are having severe strokes.
  • Trump tweeted Saturday that White House press conferences are “not worth the time & effort.” As first reported by Axios, Trump plans to pare back his coronavirus briefings.
  • The South is at risk of being devastated by the coronavirus, as states tend to have at-risk populations and weak health care systems.
  • New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday Trump was right to criticize the World Health Organization’s handling of the global outbreak.
  • Trump signed legislation Friday for $484 billion in more aid to small businesses and hospitals.
  • The House voted along party lines on Thursday to establish a select committee to oversee the federal government’s response to the crisis.
  • Unemployment: Another 4.4 million Americans filed last week. More than 26 million jobless filings have been made in five weeks due to the pandemic.