For-profit healthcare in the U.S. has placed patients and frontline workers at further risk during the pandemic, supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) argued during a webinar on Saturday.
Nurses in particular are being exploited by this system, said Katy Roemer, RN, one of the discussants on the webinar, which was hosted by the “California Bernie delegation” to the Democratic National Convention, as well as other grassroots activists.
“All of us are unsafe, and we continue 6 months into this pandemic not to have what we need to safely take care of the human beings that are entrusted to us,” said Roemer, a leader for the California Nurses Association and National Nurses United. “It is the obligation of the hospitals that we work for to give us everything that we need to be safe, and they have failed to do it.”
For example, take personal protective equipment (PPE).
In the past, nurses wore one respirator for each visit with a patient and then threw it out as they left the room. Now nurses are being told to wear the same mask through an entire shift or to put the mask in a paper bag and reuse it later, Roemer said.
“I’m sorry. Viruses don’t decide to stay on the outside of a mask while it’s sitting in … a paper bag,” she said. “It’s all over that mask.”
In addition to PPE shortages, some hospitals are cutting back on staff, Roemer said.
California has long-established staffing ratios for nurses, but hospitals and hospital associations are trying to rescind those, she said, which could have serious consequences.
For instance in an ICU, Roemer said, if hospitals and other affiliates want to start giving ICU nurses three or more patients, then people will die “because no nurse can take care of those people the way that they need to be taken care of and help them survive.”
ICU patients’ chances of survival are low, but they are going to have even less of a chance if the nursing staff isn’t there to provide “minute-by-minute” monitoring.
Kyle Thayer, a paramedic who plans to pursue a career as a physician assistant, said he and his colleagues are also having to reuse N95 masks, but he’s concerned about other supply shortages as well.
For instance, Thayer said that early in the pandemic he was told to put a new filter into breathing equipment each time it was used. But those same filters disappeared after only 3 weeks.
“Now we’re supposedly getting exposed to all the things that are coming out of the breathing tube and coming out of the person’s mouth,” he said.
Thayer also noted that overall, the COVID-19 pandemic has actually tamped down 911 phone calls, but as call volume increases he does not expect the volume of providers to increase with it.
He added that in San Diego, where he works, the 911 system is run by a subsidiary of Koch Industries. Private equity is trying to “squeeze every dollar” from families during emergency care, said Thayer.
As for ways to correct the current challenges, the webinar panelists all expressed support for “Medicare for All,” with Roemer emphasizing her disinterest in “incrementalism.”
“[P]eople are dying … They’re dying because we’re not giving them what they need to get the care that they need,” she said.
In addition to Medicare for All, both Thayer and Roemer stressed the importance of implementing the Defense Production Act (DPA) to rev up production of PPE.
And Thayer urged the Democratic party to implement reforms requiring that all 911 systems be publicly run. When a person calls 911, it shouldn’t be a company with a “profit motive” determining that patient’s care, he said.
The HEROES Act, a coronavirus relief package that stalled in the Senate after being passed by the House in May, would help address some of the current challenges for patients and frontline workers, said Roemer.
In addition to direct payments to individuals, the bill includes a measure to put in place the DPA and calls on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to establish “enforceable emergency temporary standards” — a form of safety standard intended to protect workers, she explained.
Source: MedicalNewsToday.com
