6 MAY 14, 2020 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Nurses rally, seeking ‘seat at the table’
in deciding future health care policies
BY TODD MAISEL
EDITORIAL@QNS.COM
@QNS
Members of the New York State Nurses Association
are calling on the government to
give them a seat the table in deciding medical
policies going forward aft er having been on the
front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The association, made up of 45,000 nurses
statewide, started a tour today, holding rallies at
Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, Brooklyn Hospital,
and at Rikers Island. They were seeking a
say on issues from having reusable PPE’s, to the
restoration of $2.4 billion in Medicaid cuts, and
building up stockpiles of equipment for a possible
resurgence of the virus and other pandemics in
the future.
The Rikers Island rally of more than 50 nurses
in front of the Rikers Island sign on 19th Street
hammered home their point that the facility was
“unprepared” for a pandemic and its health care
workers were “inadequately supplied” with PPE
and other protections from the beginning. Two
of their health care workers died from COVID-19,
contracted the nurses say from sick inmates.
“New York cannot reopen until we’ve got the
tools we need to stop another outbreak,” said
NYSNA Executive Director Pat Kane, RN. “We
cannot repeat the mistakes to date, or many more
lives will be lost. Nurses must have a seat at the
table where our state’s healthcare decisions are
being made.”
Kane point to what they maintain is “the
continued inadequacy of personal protective
equipment (PPE), including the rampant reuse of
N95 disposable respirators, which contributed
to eye-popping infection rates among healthcare
workers.” She said reusable respirators must be
part of the care planning going forward.
In addition, leaders are calling for the restoration
of $2.5 billion in Medicaid cuts to next year’s
NYS budget. They say “safety-net hospitals”
have borne the brunt of the COVID-19 crisis and
should receive a greater share of state Medicaid
funding and other assistance needed to care for
long-deprived communities.
They also say COVID-19 has also laid bare
the deep economic and racial disparities in
the state’s healthcare system. Reversing these
longstanding inequities, they say, “must be a
central focus as we move forward, and state lawmakers
must prioritize funding for significant
new healthcare infrastructure in hardest-hit
communities.”
Most striking was a rally outside the Rikers facility,
where at first, Corrections Officers tried to
break up the rally, but then allowed it to proceed
as long as participants remained on the sidewalk
for safety reasons. Placards put up on the Rikers
A Corrections Captain tries to move the rally but is convinced to allow it to continue.
Photo by Todd Maisel
signage were also requested to be taken down.
Nurses at Rikers expressed the most outrage
because they say they lost two nurses to COVID-19
as a result of exposure.
Mesha McDonald, a nurse at Rikers, mourned
the loss of her friend and colleague, nurse William
Chan who died from COVID-19.
“We come every day with the same mindset to
serve our patients, but today we stand on our
break to remember our beloved co-worker who
didn’t have enough protection and had a patient
with COVID throw up on him and he died and
we are in mourning right now,” McDonald said.
“Mr. William Chan died and we don’t want you
to forget Mr. Chan who gave his service to this
community. We had another young lady Natasha,
she died. We are doing the job that people are not
willing enough to do so we are asking for your
help, your solidarity. We are nurses and this is a
solemn nurses week because it brings tears to our
eyes – this is not about the coffee and the donuts,
this is about the reality.”
Nurses at Rikers say that it helped a lot to reduce
the jail population, but precautions need to
be made to improve conditions for workers and
inmates there.
“Jail and correction is not what a lot of people
want to talk about,” said Nurse Alicia Vupler, a
nurse in Rikers. “We are here every day and
we want to provide service safely. We want to
be prepared with the proper equipment. We
haven’t always had the equipment as needed and
it didn’t come easy. We have been playing catch up.
Some equipment is rationed out and not given as
we would like it. Reducing the population was a
start, but we still need to provide safe and quality
care.”
Other changes underscored by the nurses union
include: Science should set the standard. Safety,
not efficiency or expediency, must drive decisionmaking;
NY hospitals must build up stockpiles of
vital equipment and begin migration to equipment
designed to be reusable; On-demand, rapid-result
diagnostic testing is a must for all front-line healthcare
workers; Antibody tests are not and should
not be the basis for safety decisions; Nothing less
than the two-week quarantine or isolation period
must be allowed for full recovery; Going forward
hospitals will need more, not less, staffing. Nurses
report COVID-19 patient loads far beyond what
can be safely managed; Surge capacity must be
maintained. Enough hospital beds and adequately
trained staff are required to handle the repeat
outbreaks anticipated. Declare a moratorium
on hospital closings; Improved ventilation and
enhanced engineering controls must be installed
where needed; Coordinated purchasing pools, not
“PPE to the highest bidder”, are the key to equitable
access and results.
This rally and several rallies have occurred
despite the mayor and NYPD commissioner saying
these gatherings were not permitted.
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