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Anguished nurses say PA hospital risked infecting cancer patients, babies and staff with covid-19
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/11/amid-chaos-anguished-nurses-say-pennsylvania-hospital-risked-infecting-cancer-patients-babies-staff/
Medical staff at Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton, Pa., say the institution has struggled to protect them and their patients during the chaotic early days of the coronavirus crisis. (Elizabeth Herman/For The Washington Post)
Heroic effort to treat patients despite rationing of protective gowns, masks and tests
By Desmond Butler
April 11 at 10:34 AM
The nurse was pregnant — and worried. But in mid-March, early in the covid-19 crisis, a manager at Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton, Pa., assured her she would not be sent to the floor for patients infected with the deadly virus. The risks for expectant mothers were too uncertain.
Two days later, she says, the administration changed course, saying the hospital needed “all hands on deck.” The pregnant nurse said she was sent back and forth between the “covid floor” and the neonatal intensive care unit, known as the NICU, where she normally treated vulnerable newborns and recovering mothers.
It wasn’t just her baby she was worried about, she said, but the immunocompromised newborns and mothers who she was treating without informing them that she was also working on the covid floor. Even as she cared for patients symptomatic of covid-19, administrators provided her with crucial protective gear only after tests came back positive, usually several days after she first attended to the infected patients.
The nurse was one of 11 medical staff and union representatives who described from the inside how a hospital in a small Pennsylvania city struggled to protect medical staff and patients during the chaotic early days of the crisis. Seven of the nurses, who work at two sister hospitals in Scranton, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals by the Tennessee-based company that owns their hospitals, Community Health Systems.
</snip>
Medical staff at Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton, Pa., say the institution has struggled to protect them and their patients during the chaotic early days of the coronavirus crisis. (Elizabeth Herman/For The Washington Post)
Heroic effort to treat patients despite rationing of protective gowns, masks and tests
By Desmond Butler
April 11 at 10:34 AM
The nurse was pregnant — and worried. But in mid-March, early in the covid-19 crisis, a manager at Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton, Pa., assured her she would not be sent to the floor for patients infected with the deadly virus. The risks for expectant mothers were too uncertain.
Two days later, she says, the administration changed course, saying the hospital needed “all hands on deck.” The pregnant nurse said she was sent back and forth between the “covid floor” and the neonatal intensive care unit, known as the NICU, where she normally treated vulnerable newborns and recovering mothers.
It wasn’t just her baby she was worried about, she said, but the immunocompromised newborns and mothers who she was treating without informing them that she was also working on the covid floor. Even as she cared for patients symptomatic of covid-19, administrators provided her with crucial protective gear only after tests came back positive, usually several days after she first attended to the infected patients.
The nurse was one of 11 medical staff and union representatives who described from the inside how a hospital in a small Pennsylvania city struggled to protect medical staff and patients during the chaotic early days of the crisis. Seven of the nurses, who work at two sister hospitals in Scranton, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals by the Tennessee-based company that owns their hospitals, Community Health Systems.
</snip>
6 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
in IT. 
