Nurses Suspended For Refusing COVID-19 Care Without N95 Mask
In this image provided by Lizabeth Baker Wade, nurses at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, on April 10, 2020, raise their fists in solidarity after telling managers they can’t care for COVID-19 patients without N95 respirator masks to protect themselves. (Lizabeth Baker Wade via AP)
Nurse Mike Gulick was meticulous about not bringing the coronavirus home to his wife and their 2-year-old daughter.
He’d stop at a hotel after work just to take a shower.
He’d wash his clothes in Lysol disinfectant. They did a tremendous amount of handwashing.
But at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, Gulick and his colleagues worried that caring for infected patients without first being able to don an N95 respirator mask was risky.
The N95 mask filters out 95% of all airborne particles, including ones too tiny to be blocked by regular masks. But administrators at his hospital said they weren’t necessary and didn’t provide them, he said.
His wife, also a nurse, not only wore an N95 mask but covered it with a second air-purifying respirator while she cared for COVID-19 patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center across town in Los Angeles.
Then, last week, a nurse on Gulick’s ward tested positive for the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19. The next day doctors doing rounds on their ward asked the nurses why they weren’t wearing N95 masks, Gulick said, and told them they should have better protection.
For Gulick, that was it. He and a handful of nurses told their managers they wouldn’t enter COVID-19 patient rooms without N95 masks.
“I went into nursing with a passion for helping those who are most vulnerable and being an advocate for those who couldn’t have a voice for themselves, but not under the conditions we’re currently under,” Gulick said.
The hospital suspended him and nine colleagues, according to the National Nurses Union, which represents them. Ten nurses are now being paid but are not allowed to return to work pending an investigation from human resources, the union said.
A who write d title a d tory?? POTUS???
Even we at home using N95 fi just do basic shopping and errand running, so how much more those working with infected ppl.
I saw on Instagram, don’t know if it true, but the grocery store clerk in the US that died only got $20.64 on her last paycheck, just 27 years old and died. No money great or small worth losing your life over.
It’s really hard to breathe in I almost passed out wearing it this morning