Deserted: Note from a Young ICU Nurse as COVID-19 Pandemic Intensifies in U.S.
The following note came to us from a young ICU nurse in New York State. Based on other accounts we are hearing, her working conditions and the risks they put her and her colleagues in may be far from unusual at the current moment.
Coworkers and I are feeling a vast array of emotions and one of the worst ones we feel is deserted—we hear very little from hospital administrators (except when management comes to sign out our daily masks to us).
Our earliest confirmed COVID case was not isolated or swabbed for COVID until the day he died (at which point countless staff had been exposed). Several of us nurses requested that the patient be tested earlier in his admission, but mostly due to lack of preparedness and testing protocols on the hospital’s part, the patient was not tested until the fifth day of his admission.
Meanwhile, hospital administrators had sent us text messages telling us that we were not allowed to use any masks in patient rooms unless the patient was officially ordered for isolation precautions, in anticipation of PPE shortages. So, despite our suspicions that the patient had COVID, we were not able to protect ourselves. Hospital staff like me who worked closely with the patient were not informed that he had become an official suspected case until after test results came back, resulting in widespread exposures to staff and their families. The overwhelmed occupational health department gave very little guidance […]
