Featuring Rose Roach, executive director of the Minnesota Nurses Association:
How are some hospitals conserving personal protective equipment? (Hint: In ways that would be unthinkable before the pandemic.) And who’s ultimately responsible for assuring sufficient PPE supplies? Code WACK! host Brenda Gazzar and Rose Roach compare the rules for PPE use before and after COVID-19. Plus, if PPE is in such short stock, why are hospitals pushing to reinstate elective surgeries?
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PPE, Paper Bags & A Pandemic
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Opening MUSIC – “Talk Back” 10 seconds, fade down
Welcome to Code WACK!, your podcast on America’s broken healthcare system and how Medicare for All could help. I’m your host Brenda Gazzar. Today, we’ll talk about why our healthcare system is a liability, especially amid a pandemic.
Rose Roach is the executive director of the Minnesota Nurses Association, an affiliate of National Nurses United.
Welcome to Code WACK!, Rose.
Roach: Thank you for having me.
Q: In our last pod, you mentioned that the Centers for Disease Control rolled back standards on using Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during this pandemic due to short supply. What are the effects of this and what can be done about it?
Roach: So the first thing we need to do is get the CDC to put all of the PPE standards back to the pre-pandemic standards that they were, which were using things like N95 masks and gowns — a single-use. Nurses are literally being told to put them after a 12-hour shift wearing them consistently one mask for that entire shift into a paper bag, put it into a room and then come back for their next shift and use it again or maybe it’s a shift or two down the line but to keep reusing it. The mask becomes ineffective and so that is exposing our front-line workers to this disease and this virus and it is absolutely abhorrent and immoral for our country to be doing that.
Q: So before the coronavirus pandemic, they wouldn’t have allowed people to reuse N95 masks with different patients?
Roach: That’s exactly right… nurses were subject to discipline up to and including termination if they were to misuse any kind of PPE and that means a single use with a single patient, especially when you have a situation where the disease is aerosolized and you’re moving between patients. This makes absolutely no sense. It is not protective of the frontline workers and it’s not necessarily protective of the patients that are in the hospital as well. So the CDC reacting on the fact that we were short on supplies simply decided to roll back those standards to deal with the supply issue not because there was something new that happened scientifically to say ‘oh actually it’s okay to reuse that.’ NNU has again done extensive research on this only to discover that this idea you can decontaminate or reuse is absolutely not true and it is not safe.
Q: Wow, so would you say that the CDC is giving wrong or even deadly advice?
Roach: Well, I mean I suppose I should be a little bit careful to say if it’s deadly advice per se but It’s not appropriate and scientifically-based information and the CDC is not right now stepping up to protect front-line workers to provide them with the maximum and optimal protection they need dealing with this serious, novel virus.
Q: Got it. So who’s responsible for ensuring that hospitals have enough PPE for nurses and other medical staff?
Roach: So there are a couple of different layers with that. Obviously there is a responsibility of the federal government because they should be making sure that we always have an inventory available in cases of a pandemic and obviously the states can also do the same as well as the hospitals themselves. We’re not at all sure that the hospitals are quite as short as they want to claim that they are of PPE. We’re confused by that because they certainly made the push to reinstate elective surgeries and things of that nature which of course are about revenue and you need a lot of PPE to do surgeries. You burn through PPE pretty quickly with surgeries so if they have enough PPE to reopen to do elective surgeries, why is it they’re still telling nurses that you have to reuse your N95s, you can’t bring N95s in from home. Some nurses were doing that for a while because they weren’t being provided the protective gear that they needed at their hospitals and then they were being disciplined on even terminated for doing such things so there’s a lot of confusion quite frankly in regards to where’s the gatekeeper on this that says we have enough PPE but yet somehow we don’t. Which is it, right? It’s very frustrating right now for our nurses.
Q: Got it. What can you tell us about staffing and supplies in hospitals and clinics in communities of color? Are there differences in patient needs?
Roach: You know our nurses are working in communities of color. They see patients in those communities again based on the way our health system is structured that are sicker than they would be if they had access to primary care. These patients often are using public hospitals and clinics because they are uninsured or underinsured. And way too often our hospitals don’t get necessary funding that’s needed from the state, the issues of staffing — which is terribly important in hospitals. We have a staffing crisis. Access to necessary supplies is exacerbated when there’s a pandemic going on.
Thank you so much Rose.
Roach: Thanks for having me.
Find more Code WACK! episodes at ProgressiveVoices.com and on the PV app. You can also listen at heal-ca.org. This podcast is powered by HEAL California, uplifting the voices of those fighting for healthcare reform around the country. I’m Brenda Gazzar.
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