Right now doctors and nurses are being fired by their hospitals for speaking publicly about lack of PPE. You would think that whistle-blower protection, freedom of speech, or occupational safety laws would prevent this from happening. But now that we need medical staff more than ever, hospitals are firing them for alerting the public. Is there anything that can be done about this?
Something that this article doesn't seem to completely answer is, How much of this is the incompetence of the Montefiore system and how much was inevitable? or maybe, Is Montefiore different?<p>I sure hope that their irresponsible handling of the Feb 3rd case (and subsequent cases) is an exception to what hospitals have been doing. Yes, people weren't generally as aware of the disease on Feb 3rd, but healthcare workers definitely should have been (and from what I've seen quite a few were).<p>I feel like a lot of the variation in covid-19 outcomes is going to come from the competence of hospital administration.
Interview with an ER doctor in New Jersey about his experience with COVID19 over the past month:<p><a href="https://crooked.com/podcast/emergency-room-a-dispatch-from-the-front-lines/" rel="nofollow">https://crooked.com/podcast/emergency-room-a-dispatch-from-t...</a><p>The interview starts at 6 minutes if you want to skip over the intro. Alternate link:<p><a href="https://overcast.fm/+UT25k518U/06:08" rel="nofollow">https://overcast.fm/+UT25k518U/06:08</a>
What can tech do to help healthcare workers monitor their patients with minimal interaction? They are disproportionately affected and can even become virus vectors for spread.
So if we have to decide who gets PPE is it the nurses and healthcare workers or the Amazon workers.<p>Sure we can and should ramp up production but that takes time and effort. So who gets it in the meantime?
If we can't do better here most everything else is meaningless. This is not a proper response to this crisis for the greatest country in the world.
I’m seeing quotes like this regularly in the “interviews with nurses” genre of reporting:<p><i>”Many nurses and doctors have symptoms, like dry coughs, but are being denied tests and remain working, Ms. Norstein and other Montefiore health-care workers said colleagues have told them.”</i><p>This isn’t even second-hand information - it’s third-hand, and it’s irresponsible journalism. If the reporter couldn’t directly confirm the rumors, they could just say <i>“there are rumors that...”</i><p>But then, this is buried in the article:<p><i>” One patient with confirmed coronavirus stayed in the Moses ER for over 14 hours and used the same bathroom as other patients, Mr. Mathew wrote in a March 14 email to the hospital epidemiologist and an environmental health and safety director. He said he received no response.”</i><p>That is just incompetence, and it’s <i>documented</i>. Why did the reporter bury the lede?