Many hospitals and healthcare facilities have failed to provide adequate personal protective equipment to nurses working with COVID-19 patients. Some facilities are telling nurses to continue to work while asymptomatic, even though they've been exposed to the virus and might be contagious. Testing at hospitals has been sporadic. "We follow the precautionary principle, which means we shouldn't wait for harm to occur before we take action to protect people's health, " said Cathy Kennedy, RN at Kaiser Roseville. Go to CNA/NNU's COVID-19 page for our statements and letters to the Centers for Disease Control, Cal/OSHA, and others demanding protections for nurses and patients. List of CNA/NNOC and NNU National Day of Action events, all times are local to the loca tion: California Alta Bates Summit Medical Center (Summit Campus) – 12-12:30 p. m. Rally 350 Hawthorne Ave, Oakland, CA Contra Costa County Medical Center – 12 noon Rally 2500 Alhambra Ave, Martinez, CA Kaiser Santa Clara Medical Center – 7:30 a.
"Boy, what more of a reminder do you need than seeing these numbers begin to plateau? " Newsom said Monday during his weekly news conference. Dr. Mark Ghaly, California's top public health official, said Monday the state's hospitalizations have declined in part because the state is testing more people, allowing public health officials to trace positive cases and put people into "supportive isolation. " But Brad Pollock, associate dean of public health sciences at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, said this shows models that try to predict how the coronavirus will behave are "not that great. " "We don't have a model that accurately predicts what's going to happen next, " he said. Hospitalizations are trending younger in Los Angeles County, where people 18 to 29 now account for about 10% of all coronavirus-related hospitalizations compared with 5% in mid-May. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said it was one of the troubling trends in the nation's most populous county with about 10 million residents.
"If nurses and health care workers aren't protected, that means patients and the public are not protected, " said Bonnie Castillo, RN and CNA/NNOC and NNU executive director. "This is a major public health crisis of unknown proportions. Now is not the time to be weakening our standards and protections, or cutting corners. Now is the time we should be stepping up our efforts. " CNA/NNOC and NNU note that some states, such as California, can maintain a higher standard of infectious disease protections for workers. In California, nurses and health care workers are protected by Cal-OSHA's aerosol transmissible diseases standard, and Castillo said it is critical that the state hold the line on public health by vigorously enforcing those rules. In addition to lobbying almost every federal health agency, the presidential administration, and members of Congress, and California health agencies to step up protections, NNU recently surveyed RNs nationwide, finding that the vast majority of the nation's health care facilities are unprepared for COVID-19, with only 29 percent of nurses reporting that their hospitals have a plan in place to isolate a coronavirus patient, and only 30 percent saying their employer has enough personal protective equipment if there is a rapid surge in patients with possible COVID-19 infections.
Registered nurses are outraged to learn that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Tuesday further weakened its guidance on measures to contain COVID-19. These changes include, among other things, rolling back personal protective equipment (PPE) standards from N-95 respirators to allow simple surgical masks; not requiring suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients to be placed in negative pressure isolation rooms at all times; and weakening protections for health care workers collecting diagnostic respiratory specimens. These are moves that National Nurses United nurses say will gravely endanger nurses, health care workers, patients, and our communities. To protest the ineffective employer and government response to COVID-19 and demand protections now, nurses will be holding a national day of action on Wednesday, March 11, 2020, said the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) and National Nurses United. Nurses are fighting back collectively by holding rallies, press conferences, and solidarity actions across the country to demand optimal screening and isolation procedures and policies, staffing, PPE, training and education, and more.
Analysis at Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento showed that medical devices were often the root cause for pressure injuries in the intensive-care unit. ICU patients typically have devices such as catheters or ventilators that put pressure on the skin, making it vulnerable to sores. In response, Kaiser created a device rounds team, consisting of a nurse leader and bedside nurse who check all ICU patients who have a device once daily. The nurses examine if the device has a protective barrier, typically a foam dressing, between the skin and the device. If there isn't one, the nurses discuss it with the bedside nurse, educating them about the importance of using skin barriers. Nurses were also educated on the lifelong side effects of pressure injuries for patients. Nurses previously believed pressure injuries were an unavoidable side effect of care in the ICU, said Rachel Wyatt, clinical adult services director for Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento Medical Center. Since the project began, there has been a culture shift where nurses "are doing everything in their power to prevent pressure injuries, " she said.
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