Nurses Battling Coronavirus Beg for Protective Gear and Better Planning
Concerns from nurses in Washington State and California echo those of nurses nationwide. National Nurses United, a union that represents about 150,000 nurses across the country, announced on Thursday the sobering results of an online survey it recently conducted.
Of the 6,500 nurses who participated, 29 percent said their hospitals had a plan in place to isolate potential coronavirus patients, and 44 percent said they had received guidance from their employers about how to handle the virus.
Sixty-three percent had access to N95 face masks, and a quarter of the respondents had access to an even more protective mask recommended by the union, known as a PAPR, or a powered air purifying respirator.
One California nurse, who is in a 14-day self-quarantine after caring for a coronavirus patient, complained that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was not testing her for the virus quickly enough. “This is not the ticket dispenser at the deli counter; it’s a public health emergency!” she wrote in a statement shared by National Nurses United.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/us/coronavirus-nurses.html
https://act.nationalnursesunited.org/page/-/files/graphics/NU-Quarantine-RN-press-conf-statement.pdf