This story has been updated to include statements from Kaiser Permanente.
The California Nurses Association is pointing to a Kaiser facility in Fresno as an example of the hazardous working conditions that can exist under “weak CDC guidelines”. Rachel Spray, RN and chief nurse representative at Kaiser Permanente Fresno Medical Center, says administrators allowed worker-safety conditions that violated Cal-OSHA laws.
Kaiser maintains that it is using CDC-prescribed precautions, and is providing staff with protective equipment that is aligned with the latest science and guidance from public health authorities. “These are the same protocols and personal protective equipment being used by other hospitals systems in California and across the nation,” said Wade Nogy, senior vice president and area manager Kaiser Permanente Fresno.
At an informational action on Tuesday, April 14, the CNA said frontline health care providers will speak out about how the hospital’s failure to follow the precautionary principle “has led to the exposure of 60 to 70 registered nurses throughout the facility, leaving at least nine nurses so far infected with COVID-19, at least three nurses admitted into the hospital, and one nurse fighting for her life in critical care.”
“We can confirm that there are Kaiser Permanente Fresno employees who have tested positive for COVID-19,” Nogy said in an email to The Sun. “The individuals are following proper protocols and are not at work.”
Nogy said Kaiser is notifying those who were potentially exposed because of contact with the individuals and are providing each of them with instructions for monitoring, self-isolation, or other steps to protect themselves and others. “Out of respect for patient privacy, we cannot provide any additional information.”
According to a CNA statement, the nurses were exposed in late March to a patient who was only tested for COVID days after being admitted. It contends that, “Even though almost all the nurses wore surgical-type masks while caring for this patient, a large number still contracted COVID, showing that this type of PPE is inadequate protection against the virus. Currently, nurses across the country are challenging their managers daily for access to N95-standard or higher PPE.”
At Kaiser Fresno, some nurses were also not notified of their exposure or notified very late, 15 days after the exposure. Other nurses who are clearly symptomatic but tested negative at first are being denied retesting, according to the CNA.
“Kaiser Fresno is the perfect poster child of why it’s not good enough for hospitals to give the excuse that they’re just following the weak CDC guidelines,” said Rachel Spray, RN and chief nurse representative at the facility. “What this experience has taught us is that every patient should be treated as a potential COVID patient, and every health care worker must be wearing personal protective equipment that meets airborne precaution standards, as our state’s laws currently require.”
Even after the mass exposure, nurses report that Kaiser Fresno has still not learned its lesson, Spray said. Currently, it is requiring nurses to reuse the same N95 respirator mask (which meets airborne precaution standards) for an entire shift or sometimes longer, “meaning the nurse would be wearing the same mask while entering rooms where patients are COVID positive and where patients are potentially negative – opening up the risk of cross-infection.”
“What they’re doing goes against everything we’ve learned in nursing about infection control standards,” said Amy Arlund, a critical care RN and board member of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United. She noted that, prior to the pandemic, following such poor infection control protocols would normally have been grounds for disciplinary action. “And now it’s like they’ve thrown all those standards out the window as if they never existed. It’s beyond me. We say, no way!”
They should all quit and go work at other hospitals to see how bad it can really get!
So sad you would answer in this way and put responsibility back on the nurses instead of the Hospital administration where it belongs.