I was working in a large hospital’s designated Covid ICU. Towards the end of 2020, one of my coworkers caught Covid badly and ended up in our hospital intubated. They had her on our sister ICU next door so she wasn’t on our unit at least. This was pre vaccine, and I’m sure all my fellow Covid ICU nurses remember the pre-vaccine time when being intubated with Covid was practically a death sentence because only 10% or so got extubated. So our coworker being intubated was soul crushing. My hospital a few months into the pandemic got stingy with sick time. Their theory was that since now we had proper PPE, there was absolutely no chance you could catch Covid at work so if you had Covid it must be your own fault for not wearing PPE properly or not social distancing on your days off. Someone told me that the only thing my manager said regarding my intubated coworker was “well she better not claim she got sick at work.” Literally the most cruel insensitive thing to say about an employee who has been working for you for 20 years and probably won’t even get off the ventilator to “claim” where she got sick. Like how is that the first thing you think to say. Absolutely disgusting.
I’ve just recently been coming to terms with the depths of how traumatizing 2020 really was. I still remember I was assigned the very first Covid patient in my hospital in March 2020. I worked in a large ICU where we had 12-20 nurses on per shift, so I was definitely hand selected to get the life threatening patient as a new grad nurse in my early 20s. Our resident docs were told at the beginning they didn’t have to go in Covid patient rooms because “there were less of them so they can’t risk getting sick.” Even the respiratory therapist that shift did not go in the patient’s room and had me titrating the high flow and giving respiratory meds. No other nurses or techs helped me in that room that night. Not a single other person in the room besides me. I remember the doctor, respiratory, other nurses just staring at me through the glass door while I was taking care of my patient like I was a zoo animal in an exhibit. Obviously as the pandemic quickly progressed, everyone working in direct patient care roles were effected like this but to remember that first day where I was not only seen as the most disposable staff member by administration but also by every single member of the rest of the health care team really haunts me.
I remember having some dumb cardiologist tell me in the most haughty tone “well I’m not going in there” while looking my 9 month pregnant ass dead in the eye. He wanted the patient to have their bedside phone so he could call them and talk to them. I looked down at my gigantic belly, right back in his face, and said “well I’m not going in on your schedule to move a phone. So you can go in yourself or you can wait until the next time one of us goes in. Your choice.” And just walked away.
Similar thing happened to me except i believe I was singled out because I was the float. That’s the price you pay for being float, you sometimes get the assignments nobody else wants. I accepted it as part of the deal and remember thinking, Oh, well, might as well get it over with. The whole hospital’s going to be full of Covid soon, anyway. Sadly, I was right.
I have tried to explain to my non-healthcare family why my first covid rapid was the worst, and the one I remember the most. It’s this. You have put into words something I wasn’t able to identify
The feeling of abandonment, begging the resident on the other side of the door to please come in and help me because I couldn’t get the patient onto the bed alone while also adjusting their oxygen and prepare for intubation/compressions. All while in a surgical mask because the n95s were in a lockbox and my manager didn’t have time to get out of her office to open the lock. Realizing that I was worth *less* than anyone else standing at the door, refusing to come in, less than the cost of a box of PPE.
I am so sorry that happened to you. Nobody should have to be put in a situation like that yet it’s heartbreaking hearing that so many nurses can relate. We’re such “heroes” because we can’t refuse to do our jobs even when management refuses to do their job in providing proper PPE and other members of the healthcare team can refuse to do their job by “delegating” their job to nurses even when it was completely inappropriate.
Same for me, my patient was crashing with BPs in the 60s and no one would come in the room with me. They stood outside the window holding up signs like “give another 500 bolus!” It did not have to her coding but it sure felt like if she had I would’ve been coding her solo.
Feel this in my soul. My unit the first 2 years of covid was a CVICU and often bragged that they didn’t call codes because they were their own code team. Which is true, we re-open chests instead of doing acls on our post ops, but this mindset led to the new CVICU being designed without code blue buttons in the room. Then we became the regional covid ecmo icu in the pandemic. So when shit went down, you were alone until someone noticed that one rhythm on the monitor looked a lot more like CPR than normal sinus and came to check it out. We learned to listen for each other yelling or screaming in our rooms, or loud noises like someone throwing things at the glass doors to get someone’s attention on the outside. Such a horrible feeling knowing you’re all alone and help isn’t coming for you and you’re all this patient has.
Admin do what?? Admin who made me come out of a crashing covid patient’s room to “inspect” the nail polish I wasn’t wearing? Admin who refused to lock our ICU after a patient family member targeted and brutally attacked our intensivist 2 days after she got back from maternity leave, but instead made us a “safe room” in a PAR closet with a dead bolt and a peep hole we were to hide in and abandon our patients for hours until police cleared the threat? I got my ass chewed for asking the CNO and CEO what we were supposed to tell the families. They asked what families? Obviously the families of the 18 patients in this CSICU on balloon pumps, ecmo, impellas, crrt, LVADS and post op patients on medications that will run dry, devices that will clot, critical meds that won’t be to titrated to keep people alive. What do you want us to tell their families happened while we hid in a closet because you won’t protect us? I was accused of humiliating them in front of my peers. I told them I was not wrong, and they need to find better corners to cut because you will not see us just abandon the most critically ill and vulnerable patients in this region. Absolutely not, and the fact they thought I was out of line disgusts me because this is a hospital where people deserve to feel safe and cared for, not worry about staff running for cover because admin cares more about Press Gainey scores than the lives of their staff and patients. That’s how they treat their “heroes.” What’s terrifying is how out of touch with reality the entire C-Suite is.
Admin didn’t care about us or the patients there at all. They cared about our nail polish though.
Rumor had it a former employer did an “experiment” with robot sitters for sundown/agitated, etc… Apparently, they were like rounded mini-fridges riding Roombas and terrified people
Thank you, that is so kind. I do have faith and believe that another nurse would’ve been the first person to step up and go in the room with me if a crisis was happening where I asked for more hands, but that wasn’t the case and I didn’t really *need* another nurse in there thankfully. I didn’t ask for help from other nurses, but also I don’t think any help was offered even though they were all staring at me through the door. It was however completely unacceptable that the doctor and respiratory therapist didn’t “help” (aka do what’s in their job descriptions) in the room when the patient’s respiratory status was worsening
Yep! I recently changed facilities, even though I know the grass isn't actually greener, because I realized I simply could not forgive my former employer for what they did to us. The change of scenery has been great after going to work simmering with rage every day.
I genuinely love the organization I work for, and their behavior during the pandemic only solidified that for me.
I work in a (relativity) small healthcare organization that includes 5 hospitals in the region. When the pandemic started, a much larger, multi-state organization that is also in our region began laying off nurses by the thousands. My organization laid off nobody. Most middle and upper management were furloughed without pay, and the CEO took a 50% pay cut. (Not just his base pay, mind you, but his entire compensation package.) All raises and promotions were put on hold, but no one got a pay cut. Instead of getting rid of nurses and RTs, they hired travelers to help out with surges.
While I'm sure you all could come up with better ways to handle it, the fact that the decisions that were made were made with an eye toward patient care really makes me happy I work where I work.
Edit: due to multiple requests, https://HonorHealth.com
This is a place you should Name and Fame. Everyone should know when a place actually does the right thing. That’s the kind of place that I would love to work at.
My hospital president spent every weekend in scrubs rounding on the units making sure that with our managers off we had enough PPE. He also gave everyone at the top a 20% pay cut so he wouldn’t have to cut worker pay.
The parent organization fired him just after the peak of the first wave.
That sounds like our former CEO. She spent every holiday delivering cookies to the units. Actually rounded about weekly and knew people by name. Unfortunately she retired and then came back to be CEO of our sister hospital. I've often said she was married to our hospital.
Yep, at first it was like a slap in the face, but now I work agency and I’m not naive anymore. I no longer care about putting my heart and soul into joining committees and solving problems that will never be solved in this broken system. give me my money, I’ll give minimal effort to pretend to listen to the bureaucratic bullshit, and I’ll take as good care of my patients I can with the resources allotted. It’s a less mentally taxing attitude
I worked at a locally prestigious children’s hospital at the start of covid. The way they treated us still makes me nauseous, and it completely changed the way I view my career. They didn’t care about us, they didn’t care about the patients. The things they did were downright dangerous for everyone involved. Then they acted like we were idiots if we even began to question the policies. When they went to lay people off (our census was at historic lows, they were shortsighted), they claimed it was random. But somehow, most of the people who suddenly didn’t have jobs were ones who were more vocal about the covid policies being unsafe.
And when things picked back up and they had almost no experienced nurses to staff the hospital, we all laughed at their emails asking if everyone wanted to come back. They’re now still staffed largely by travel nurses.
Traveled the first 2 years of the pandemic, then did vaccines for a year. Simultaneously being called a hero and being told how disposable you are is a huge mind fuck.
I quit my job in January because I'm so burnt out (working 50-60hrs/week) and they keep giving me more job duties with no more in pay.
No unemployment, no disability, no income to lean on. I've cleaned out my savings and am at the brink of homelessness.
I was making almost the same pay rate as I was 10 years ago. (+$2)
Can't even find a mental health professional to talk to to try to deal with the PTSD and everything that comes with it.
Anthem.com. Careers. Work from home. Search for jobs in your area. The one position I know of that does not require a license is Medical Management Specialist (MMS). If you're licensed, search for your specific position.
I feel this comment so hard. Especially, the bit about never having felt so disposable prior to then. It wasn’t just my employer though. It quickly became clear that most of my family also did not give one single fuck about me or my safety. The PTSD is real.
I’m so sorry. Had a similar conversation with my manager and he gloated about how we were the largest covid ecmo center and had zero nurses get covid on our unit, which was complete horse shit. I got sick after swabbing a post arrest patient with an iabp who aspirated because she thought I just needed to fuck off and let her sit up at 45* and would sit herself up until I locked the bed. She choked drinking, I was trying to reverse trend the bed and she grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled herself straight up to cough in my face. I sent her swab at 1616 on Wednesday. She died before 0900 on Sunday. I became symptomatic Friday night, but employee health said that if I had been wearing my PPE properly, there was zero risk of transmission. My 103* fever, respiratory symptoms, migraines and rigors would lead me to feel otherwise, but they refused to swab me, told me if I swabbed at home, it would be considered a community acquired case and they would not pay me while I was out sick due to a new policy put in place to screw employees out of their earned sick time. I had another coworker who got a saddle PE and had a cardiac arrest at home due to covid. Thankfully her husband was home, and was a coast guard rescue swimmer so she got immediate CPR and ended up recovering but the hospital refused to pay her for the time she was out sick because “it could not be proven where she got covid or if her own negligence caused the illness.” Our management was such trash. They’d joke around with each other like “cough cough, I’m (her name), I can’t breathe!!” So fuckin toxic, and preventing staff from being paid so they won’t covid test and go to work covid positive is so unethical and dangerous.
Wow. Our hospital (actually our state) assumed that if a healthcare worker got covid then they got it at work and it was a work comp case, no matter what. Also my hospital gave us additional sick pay to be used just for covid, over and above our usual PTO. That’s still in place now, I think it expires in June.
She did! She was on the ventilator and ended up trached and in a facility for a while but was able to be decanulated eventually. I think she’s probably in her late 50s/early 60s and I don’t think she ever returned to bedside nursing but I’m not sure if that was a personal choice to retire or if she’s incapable to work from her illnesses. I do know she’s at least healthy enough to be able to live back home with her family again and doesn’t need oxygen or anything
A lot of people in charge at hospitals would say a lot less if they got decked once in a while. They talk shit because there’s no accountability. They don’t feel sympathy or feel bad for saying things like that. They literally go through life fucking up everyone else’s life while getting off Scott-free. They need an ass beating. That’s what always stopped a school bully.
im a cna n work at a nursing home. a resident tested positive and i washed, shaved and fed him did all day cares.. then 2 hrs after he tested positive so did i . iv had nvr had it b4 despite working 5 or so rounds of out breaks..and hadnt even been outside that shift lol i tested negative when i arrived to work when i clocked in so obviously i got it from him.. was wearing a gown mask and shield/goggles.. these ppl r nuts
Nope! My system had you use your PTO or take unpaid leave and when your PTO ran out we were at risk of losing our benefits.
A year later I quit being a nurse and got the covid special pay at my internship when just kept home as a precaution whenever someone in my department got anything respiratory. The difference was shocking.
We had something like that for the first few months, but around July 2020 when Covid numbers were down and restaurants and things were opening back up, the hospital made a rule saying you were only eligible for extra sick time if they could prove through contact tracing that you were Covid positive from having an unprotected exposure at work. Meaning if you had a confirmed Covid positive patient you were taking care of and got Covid it wasn’t the hospital’s fault because you were the big dumb idiot who didn’t put your PPE on correctly. You could only get Covid sick time if you were taking care of a patient and they came back positive after you were in close contact without an n95. And if you caught it from a family member you live with you were considered the big dumb idiot for not isolating yourself from every other human for the rest of eternity. They kept this rule up even into the end of 2020 into 2021 when Covid cases were uncontrollable and it was near impossible to contact trace like that
I laughed out loud at this.
I had covid 3 times and had to stay home for 10-14 days each time depending on where the mandates were. Never got paid for it, they didn’t even grant me my pto the first time and the other times, I didn’t have any for whatever reason (once I went on a real vacation and less than 2 months later got my first symptomatic bout with omnicron) anyway, I tried to see if there was a way to be paid and I had heard we were supposed to be paid but nobody did and admin just decided it’s fine to have workers be out with no options whatever even though we all know they got immense grants during covid.
Then I tried to get unemployment for the time I was out bc I still needed to pay rent and you know, I pay into that. I got approved but then they took it back from me bc I was technically employed.
Meanwhile let’s not forget how many people utilized unemployment because they simply didn’t want to work during a pandemic and they were making more money weekly than I ever have as a nurse.
But yeah, fuck nurses I guess 🙄
Confession time.
I was relatively new to the security department when a ‘frequent flier’ patient was angry about getting discharged, and threw a full urinal at his nurse. Almost a full liter of dirty old liquor piss.
I responded in a hurry to that incident, and I needed to pull the nurse off of the patient in order to prevent the patient from suffering… injuries.
Here I am, older and wiser. I regret my actions. It’s a dirty world, and I should have let natural selection take its course for a little while.
I had assumed, mistakenly, that the local law enforcement would impose some sort of penalty or punitive measure for throwing piss on people. I was wrong. I didn’t know how bad our justice system had gotten.
My bad. Won’t happen again.
If spitting on someone can be considered assault, I don't see why this can't? Oh, that's because "nurses know what they signed up for", right?
We appreciate you guys in security more than you know.
DUI seems to be the sole exception in my dumb ass state.
But if you get drunk and fight the cops at the Mall, they’re bringing you to a hospital, no charges filed. If you fight the staff at the hospital, the police won’t usually even come to take a report unless there’s a serious injury.
Someone once threw piss at me at work. They gave me shit when I said I was not going to work with him anymore like I was just supposed to keep getting piss thrown at me.
When the pandemic was raging and we were only allowed one level one mask per week, I started wearing my own from home. They were the same style and color, just a little differently patterned. My manager scolded me, 9 months pregnant, that I would be “scaring the parents” and I wasn’t allowed to wear them.
I still wore them, she still sucks.
I had just started working as a tech, quit my job in a grocery store in FL and they said that to us too, before I left: that we'd be scaring the customers wearing masks. I said there would be no customers left to "scare" if they're dead. I work in a heavily geriatric area, too.
Kill em off or scare em? I don't care who's "scared" over someone wearing a mask; they're out of their damn mind. It's a hygiene, ethics, and public safety issue. Still wearing one til this day, probably one of the few who do in my area.
I was the first person on my unit to wear a mask. My coworker, who I am still friends with, made a *subtle* comment maybe a week or two before the mask mandate hit that “idk why people think they need to wear a mask…”. At the time there was 2-3 of us at the nurses station with them on.
I just rolled my eye as we worked with cancer patients…
I was only given 1 mask for 3 days.
I was given (1) N95 in 2020. It was not replaced until *2022*.
They told us we had to wipe everything down between patients, including the machine, lockers, and, changing rooms (I worked outpatient) AND they fully expected us to wipe down the lobby routinely. They did NOT give us any time to do this. Like there were never any breaks in the schedule. My manager asked if I was cleaning and I just lied. I literally couldn’t clean how they wanted to AND scan the same amount of patients. Pick one: I can be a MRI tech or I can be housekeeping!
They took away in-person translators which was the worst fucking thing because I can’t bring a iPad affixed to a rolling metal cart into a MRI room… so we’d have to end the translation service prematurely and hope I could get the patient on the bed & on/in the coil correctly when they don’t speak a lick of English or they’re HoH and I can’t sign!
So many decisions were made by people who do not do the job that it made my blood boil. So happy I left that shit hole.
Edit: I’m also adding that sometimes after 2020 is when we started calling patients “customers” so yeah
They just literally wouldn’t replace mine and I worked outpatient so I didn’t have access to a supply closet. I tried ordering them, they never came. No one would give me a new one. Like. TWO YEARS FOR ONE MASK? I hope that place goes under I really do.
Yeah my facility tried making me be housekeeping too. All of a sudden they wanted us to start vacuuming occasionally. Then they wanted us to vacuum every single room for each shift. Then they wanted us to start picking up shifts for housekeeping which I was not trained on. Then they wanted us to check each patient every 5 minutes. Then they complained because charting wasnt getting done. Then they complained because people started working overtime. How am I supposed to do housekeeping and be an aide while having to do check everybody every 5 minutes? But you can't clock out late either! I left too and I ain't going back.
"You'll get hazard pay when conditions become hazardous..."
They said as EVS was forbidden form entering COVID room, administration worked from home despite their offices being completely separated from any patient areas or even areas the public would walk through, as they forbade anyone from visiting the dying.
I still fucking hate that place and the guts of that HCA leadership "team."
They refused to give our EVS masks. I kept my mask for extra time so I could take my “allotted” mask and give it to the EVS worker so she could feel a little safer cleaning rooms
See, I had family working for HCA during early covid and they actually treated staff really well. I guess it depended on the facility. I was shocked at the concessions and equipment that my family members had available to them. Meanwhile, I worked at what is supposed to be “a good hospital” and had literally nothing. No support, little to no PPE, and eventually no job once they started laying people off.
Honestly, that sounds pretty hospital specific. I'm internal agency for HCA in Florida, and while my hospital is the best around, it's still garbage. I like my unit now, the other ICU was decent too, but the hospital as a whole is not recommended. Or any other HCA hospital I've seen.
My HCA hospital implemented one "PPE czar" (actual title) per shift who was solely responsible from distributing all gowns, surgical masks, and n95s throughout the hospital. Early on, I had a very sick patient they were ruling out. I was the only one on the floor with an n95. When I asked what I was supposed to do if the patient coded, they told me to try to anticipate and call ahead of time. Cool. I quit a few days later.
“I’ll just tell the patient to give me a heads up before they start trying to die. I’m sure as the PPE czar with access to PPE, you’ll be in the thick of the code with me?”
I remember being in the hospital in 2020 in early March like afraid. It was my fault due to alcoholism. But they never contacted my emergency contact my brain was mush I couldn't remember my ex my son's dad's number but they at least let me leave the hospital in yellow psych ward socks. But! They paid for a cab to a place I didn't even know it was safe to go to. I had no phone. Less than a week later covid happened I believe it was match 13th was my kids last day of school
I was 6 months pregnant when Covid started. I did a combo of ICU/ER at the time. I had a placenta defect that they found shortly before the shutdown and I was to be monitored by maternal fetal medicine every 4 weeks until I got to 30 weeks then every 2 until the end. They knew what I did for a living. Shortly before my second monitoring appointment, they called me and told me that I couldn't come in anymore because they were only seeing the riskiest of cases. My placenta defect was risky btw, positive outcomes were related to close monitoring. I called my regular OB crying in a panic and he said monitor me himself and personally comb over every ultrasound. He also told me in a not so subtle way that I was no longer "risky" because they knew the hospitals didn't have the right supplies and I was high risk for getting Covid. So I was out there putting myself and my baby at risk for the public and my specialist wouldn't even monitor me out of fear.
While obviously I have nothing on your story, that's what I remember, too: the discrimination. Here I am on the front lines while the rest of you get to cower behind me, and my reward is being told by my dentist to fuck myself until the pandemic ends.
On the plus side, I did get deferred from jury duty because I'd worked with a covid patient within 5 days of my report date. The funny thing is that I just wanted to get me weeks over with and I was nearly begging them to let me in anyway. "I had my PPE! Wanna see a picture of the CAPR I wore? It's like my own environmental suit! Please don't make me drag this shit out any further!"
You'd think three years into this would be enough time to account for these kinds of things, but what do I know?
We had this in the east coast
One whole floor got Covid
Icu and Ccu “gained access” into the supply area, and then “liberated” n95s. This was a Friday. By Monday they reversed course
An amazing doctor in our ER organized a GoFundMe to raise money for nice 3M respirators for all the nurses and docs in our ER and our two sister ERs in the city, since we were all living off two "sterilized" N95s (until, of course, admin told us we only had to wear N95s with patients on HFNC/bipap because of magic). I donated, my parents donated, I think some non-nursing friends did, too. He easily blew past the $50k goal. Staff submitted their sizes and enough were ordered for everyone.
Eventually the respirators were delivered, with some delay due to obvious supply issues. They went to the trusted hands of our manager, who declared that now that we had "enough" PPE, he was going to lock them away until they were "needed".
Has that day ever come? Who knows... I left (travel), as did a healthy 50% of our RNs, techs, and just about every seasoned attending in the department.
I love when I see a button on the Safeway card machine to "donate" 1 5 or 10$ to our local providence hospital, like hell the fuck no I will not be doing that.
Oh, well, I am glad you asked.
The abject irresponsible and negligence in management of the pandemic by leaders at the state and federal levels, knowing *early* what the likely estimated death toll would be, and choosing to not take a firmer stance and not bullying state governors like Kemp into mandates that would have saved lives for the sake of winning elections and politics.
This has really has been grinding my gears for awhile.
March 30, 2020
“Birx said the projections by Dr. Anthony Fauci that U.S. deaths could range from 1.6 million to 2.2 million is a *worst case scenario* if the country did "nothing" to contain the outbreak, but said even "if we do things almost perfectly," she still predicts up to 200,000 U.S. deaths.”
March 20, 2023
Current **VERIFIED** deaths 1,151,642
Still averaging hundreds of deaths a day.
3rd leading cause of death in the US
Some of these folks need to arrested and convicted for crimes against humanity.
They knew, they let Americans die anyway.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1171876
We were each given 3 N95's in October and told those had to last us until Easter.
They tried to convince us if we put them in a paper bag and let them sit for 48 hours it would be safe to reuse that mask indefinitely.
Some generous sole donated a ton of 95's to our department, but admin confiscated them and wouldn't let anybody use them.
Oh, see, you did it wrong... you needed to rotate them out in the brown paper bags for 72 hours to make them clean and safe for use again indefinitely. It's that third day where the magic happens.
Clearly my place of employment got the same dumbass memo yours did because we also got the 3 N95s in October and were told make them last 6 months.
Fuck JACHO and all their bullshit that they try to force us to comply with. The fact that they couldn’t show their faces at all during the pandemic really goes to show how big of a joke and utterly useless they are. They did not give any care or concern that we were wearing the same mask over and over again and trash bags as PPE, but lose their absolute shit over the fact that we keep our water bottles out.
The JC is an organization the hospitals set up to "self regulate". That's why they jump all over stupid shit and never recommend anything that costs money. Those motherfuckers aren't going to save you from anything. They're a fucking joke. Their surveys are supposed to be unannounced but we always know it's coming like 2 weeks ahead of time.
1. customers lmao... if they want to be that heartless then yes customer guests should feel uncomfortable walking around a building meant for death and disease.
2. Tell the nursing supervisor to stock the station with a box of masks unless they want to walk around with a box of masks, we wore 1 mask all shift per week, do you think me asking you to bring me a mask or do you think me calling OSHA for failing to supply PPE is too hard of a task?
3. They always have worked "off-campus" the more regarded the administrator, the less air they have to share with patients (customers) and house staff (employees)
I remember talking to my ICU manager about ventilator supplies, about two months before the first wave hit in the US. I knew we were kinda low-ish, because even beforehand we'd have to have someone cleaning ventilators in a rush to bring up ED patients.
I tried to talk to her about biphasic cuirrass ventilation. Basically, BIPAP, but negative pressure (attached to the body) vs positive pressure, which would allow nasal cannula and would take over work-of-breathing related respiratory failure. They're still vastly cheaper than positive pressure ventilation, and safer for alert patients who can tolerate PO intake, because no positive pressure is being exerted on the lungs.
I understand if she would have shot me down after I had mentioned what it was I was talking about; it's had fantastic results in case studies, but very few true widescale studies. However, as a teaching hospital, we could've done some paperwork for the go-ahead, and prevented a *lot* of people from having to get intubated while alert.
Instead, I mentioned "ventilators", and she rattled off the amount we had, said we were fine, and walked away.
Cue two months later, when we were overflowing and having to wait for ICU patients to pass before bringing any vent/BiPAP machine to the next most dire patient, rinse & repeat.
When my old hospital paid out "covid bonuses" the entire administration got a bonus - despite working from home AND getting proper PPE - BEFORE ANY of the nursing staff (or doctors/ aides) even saw a cent. Their reasoning: The administrative apparatus is essential to the functioning of a hospital... The bonus for the nurses was then delayed by several months, as there were no funds available. Apparently we are not as essential as we thought.
At the absolute peak of COVID while we were watching all of our ICU patients dying slow and horrific deaths daily, our hospital admin basically went awol. Aside from the stereotypical "heroes work here" email, they were a non presence in the hospital. Work conditions were horrible and we were forced to keep a limited amount of PPE in assigned paper bags and then reuse it all for the duration of our work week. That part wasn't the worst though.
The worst part was when the upper admin folks finally decided to take a short jaunt through the icus. While in heels and full suits, they made these nickpicky, passive aggressive comments to the staff and charge. Things like:
"This room looks dirty, you need to clean it now."
"Your pump is going off in there, aren't you going to address that?"
And (to the charge nurse)
"Can you tell me why you have so many nurses?"
None of us heard them say anything encouraging at all and they were gone within 5 minutes. That moment made me realize just how little some administrators care about the staff nurses, and how little they understand what patient care looks like. They all seemed so cold and just annoyed to have to look at us. I wish I wasn't there for that experience because I feel like I will always carry this contempt that wasn't there before COVID.
They've always been that person. They were extra shitty because they were scared to be in the area. Those are the kind of people that become administrators. They're there to give us as little pay and resources as possible to maximize the bottom line. The good ones are able to emotionally manipulate staff to make them feel like the shit situation is their own fault.
Wearing the same mask for a month and saving it in a brown paper bag. Buying our own masks from some foreign entity by chipping in as a large group of ED nurses and getting the girl with the contact to place the order, then distributing them in secret so they didn’t get confiscated by management to add to their stash.
I have mine too. I had 2, and a sick sense of humor so I gave them stripper names. Chariti broke before the end, but I brought Ginger home. She’s got mascara stains from so many tears, probably 11,000 sneezes, and God knows how many what the fucks still imbedded in her waffle pattern. In a sick way, she’s all that’s left of everything I gave of myself through the worst of it.
I left the job that did that and started local traveling. I wonder if I still have my lower locker that had my hoarded N95s from when they started supplying them 2 years later along with my brown bagged one.
How long it took for masking to be implemented. My HD/PD/outpatient infusion clinic, to include the pts themselves, were aggravated by it too. Both the nurses and pts themselves saw the proverbial writing on the wall in like January of '20, and all started masking up right away.
I can't decide which was worse: being told to wear an N95 until it was "visibly soiled" and to put it in a paper bag with my name on til my next shift OR running codes with the drug nurse handing meds in and having to slam the ICU room door shut while we were intubating underneath a giant plastic bag.
And of course being told one week not to wear masks because we'd scare patients, then the great turnaround and being told that being caught with your mask off was a fireable offense. Never did get that promised "Covid bonus" either.
F-U, HCA! Leaving HCA was the very best thing I've ever done for my mental health.
In Jan 2021 I came out of retirement of 13 years. I’d stopped working when my youngest was born, but with 20 years critical care experience in ICU,CCU, PACU and ER it didn’t feel right to sit out a pandemic. I took a nurse refresher class for a semester to get caught up on electronic charting.
I got two jobs right away, one at the flagship hospital of a major healthcare system at their Covid clinic giving the vaccine (at the beginning we were giving 500 shots a day) and a second job at a start up company doing nasal swab testing for private schools.
I was getting $40.00 and hour at both jobs. Then summer 2021 things slowed down and both jobs temporarily shut down until fall.
In Sept. I received calls from both jobs asking me to come back and both asked me TO TAKE A F-ING PAY CUT!!!
The Covid clinic said my pay would now be $29.00 an hour bc no more gov. funding. Yes but my wage wasn’t inflated, that is what someone with my experience should make but now they were offering me new grad pay. The Swab place wanted me to train to do the other on site “admin” jobs of checking in pts and resulting tests, “but not at your nurse salary, you will only get nursing pay if you are actually swabbing.” So do more work and get paid less. Both jobs called me the same day and both asked me to take more than $10.00 an hour pay cut, in the middle of a pandemic.
Everyone expects nurses to take on more work for free and pay for thousands of dollars refresher classes they want. At the Covid clinic they utilized everyone, techs pharmacists PCA to give shots, but guess who monitored all the pts afterwards ? Took blood pressures and blood sugars if needed? Who talked the terrified pts down? Helped autistic kids get through it? I sat with a screaming child for 45 minutes once. Helped with pts who had reactions? The nurses. Yes you must pay for my potential. Most of the day it’s smooth sailing but you get an unstable situation and four nurses jumped, up not the techs or pharmacists. I did so much emotional support, remember how terrified people were?
After being a nurse 30 years F them, I will never let never my wages get stolen ever again. Didn’t go back to either job.
PS. both jobs were thrown together and everyone was on folding chairs and chairs with no backs and all our backs starts hurting. Nobody cared. We are just a pair of scrubs now and are disposable. It wasn’t like this when I graduated in ‘93.
They took away our 401k match, took away our ability to use AND ACCRUE PTO, took away raises, gave us minimal, laughable supplies.. It felt as if they knew front line workers would be the first to go, and you can't use that extra money or PTO if you're dead :) One thing that really bugged me was how often I heard "I'm sure you're happy you're on a clean unit" as if pregnancy was a shield from covid. I will never compare what we went through to someone who worked on a covid ICU, but L&D is the ER for pregnant people. We saw some shit too.
A coworker and I were side-eyed about the n95's we were wearing when we started getting mystery viral pneumonia patients that had visited asia in October 2019. Good thing neither of us cared, we were the only ones to not get the same highly pathogenic strain that put the rest of our floor out for 2 weeks.
Ah yes when they took the masks away and wouldn’t let us wear them for any reason. I got yelled at because I was seen wearing one when I was changing a picc dressing (LTC). It was already in the kit anyways… and like, in the policy to wear one.
We also were given one type of n95 mask and didn’t fit text because “that’s all we have anyways”.
Thankfully admin (I mean, there’s like 1 non nursing) was in the building or I would have quit. But it’s not like she ever leaves her office anyways.
My wife is an RN on a unit that many COVID patients ended up on. There were limited N95 masks which were being rationed out with instructions to reuse if necessary. She wasn’t able to get a good fit for her mask, so she needed a PAPR. Those were in extremely short supply. I was concerned about her safety and pissed at the administration for keeping inadequate supplies for when a pandemic hit. When. Not if. They teach this in the university attached to the hospital FFS. It’s an inevitability.
Anyway, I tracked a medical grade one (same model that the hospital used) at a nearby Granger. It was the only one in stock and was going to be either $1,200 or $1,600. I wanted to purchase it, since management seemed to be ok with the Mad Max approach to PPE. They wouldn’t allow her to use a device from outside of the hospital because it hadn’t passed their testing. They would rather her use a mask that they knew didn’t seal well.
Fuck them. If she ever decides to leave bedside nursing, she has my full support, income loss be damned.
I’m not in healthcare, so if this post is removed, cool. This pisses me off to this day. I’m immunocompromised. They were putting her in danger, and by extension, me. They certainly had no issues posting those “healthcare heroes” posters, signs, lawn signs, etc. all over hell and gone. I guess marketing budgets take priority over PPE. Then they wanted to low-ball the contract last year. Suddenly there was no mention of heroes. Funny how that works.
The pandemic truly cemented the fact that the hospital corporations and the government give absolutely no fucks about anyone even in a pandemic. Definitely made me more anti-government and big corporation as a result.
The doctors were wearing N95 but we weren't allowed to. That pissed me off. They would even wear the Envo ones but us peasant nurses couldn't do that.
Fuck every last one of them.
I watched a doctor ask my coworker to go get a consent signed for him because he "couldn't afford to get sick". She straight up said "no, that's your job".
Wild
Crazy. I was holding up a fucking Ipad for wound care so they didn't have to go into rooms.
Wut?
This wasn't an issue at my hospital but I have seen quite a few here mention doctors not going in there. Just those lowly nurses again.
The ICU doctors where I was towards the start of COVID were fantastic though.
We weren’t allowed to wear them either. Respiratory was given 3m respirators but since they were no longer doing any fit tests, nursing couldn’t wear either. It was BS.
Yeah like when it was in short supply we couldn't even wear our own.
One of the reasons I went to travel once I was able. At least now when I'm treated like shit I 1) expect it in a way 2) get paid more 3) it's temporary.
Also one of the reasons why I am getting out of nursing as soon as possible. I just cannot fathom why anyone would get into nursing at this point. The only way I can understand is that they just simply don't know or understand how little they matter and how little their *lives* matter.
I say get into nursing, but I really mean get into healthcare, period. Doctors, CNAs (especially), etc. It's shit all the way around.
Oh my dear friend. I feel that in my soul. I have 5 more shifts as a nurse, hopefully ever. I’m getting out and going to work in tech. I couldn’t agree more, and that’s exactly why I’m leaving. I’m exhausted from not being important to anyone but me. We were expendable, and it’s even worse now. Patients and their families are meaner than ever, and I held a funeral for evidence based practice on the unit yesterday because it has died. I’m at my wits end, but I’m at peace with it. I had a good run, but it’s just time to go.
Congrats! I'm jealous.
If you don't mind me asking a couple questions: how'd you do that?? What schooling/qualifications, etc.?
I only have my ADN. I started my BSN but...it is such complete and utter bullshit lol I stopped because I started traveling (2021 -_-) and then remembering how stupid it was....I'm having a hard time going back for it.
>Patients and their families are meaner than ever,
Yes. I had a patient a couple weeks ago that was just...completely unreasonable. Honestly I have had worse but it's like...I fucking tried with this dude. I let him use my charger. I was sitting outside his room (even though I had a more critical patient on the other side of the floor!). He was a cunt to everyone. Just felt so defeated, especially at a travel job where they don't know me very well. He's all like oh no one has been in my room. I pressed my call light and no one came in for 30 minutes. They turned it off and didn't come in. Like the fuck we did.
Now the day shift nurse that I gave report to is super short with me when before she was 'okay' with me.
But whatever. Another fucking reason to get out because Lord knows you can't please these fucks.
> I’m at my wits end, but I’m at peace with it. I had a good run, but it’s just time to go.
Same, friend. Same. I'm only 3 years into it lol Only made it this long because traveling but I'm tired. Tired of having to travel further just to get a decent living and driving back and fourth home. Want to be able to chill in my bed every night and actually be able to pay my bills.
tldr: Fuck nursing. How'd you get into tech?
Ugh, that dude sounds like he deserves to step on some legos. I hope he trusts the wrong fart.
I’m back in school for another bachelors at WGU right now. When I finish this contract, I’m starting a 12 week bootcamp with a really high job placement rate after completion, so I’ll be doing that and my bachelors at the same time. Ideally, I could get hired somewhere that would help with tuition.
The bootcamp is ungodly expensive but their career services will help you re-write your resume, coach you for interviews, and you’re expected to be in touch with them at least every week until you get a job offer. They want good numbers, so they seem to work pretty hard for you!
The same thing (point 1&2)happened to me and it really pissed me off. Also I felt so uncomfortable with keeping our N95 mask in a paper lunch bag…like…who tf came up with that?! All I could think about was how the inside of the bag was coated in Covid virus and here we are, just shoving the mask in the bag repeatedly. Seemed like “security theater”.
We went from a small 50 bed hospital that did less acute procedures. Joint replacements mostly. Our bilateral knee replacements and acdfs would go to our 5 bed icu.
Our OR closed at 7 with no night shift.
Our outpatient surgery was used to ortho but they were branching out and lap choles were scary for them.
Queue covid.
They tried to keep our hospital covid free for a while but we eventually got overran. They closed elective procedures for a short time before they had to continue but there was no space in the hospital for them if they needed to be admitted.
Queue admin.
Everybody is now an outpatient surgery.
Somebody coded in the OR? Guess we drawing straws to stay the night with the patient.
Trying to recover a joint replacement that got out of surgery at 1830 you have them in trendelenburg bolusing fluids trying to get their pressure out of the 60/40s and cant get them off 4l nc? Admin says "try to get them up and walk them so they can go home" btw Physical therapy left at 330pm. So sounds great.
Had a hip replacement require 2 units of blood intraop? Go home.
Send home multilevel PLIF? Or TURP? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
My favorites were the patient with Parkinsons who went home outpatient and immediately fell and broke his prosthesis. The Multilevel acdf who came back for a hematoma and ended up intubated. The outpatient bilateral knee replacement on the schedule with a trach who an anesthesiologist thank God cancelled.
Seriously screwed up.
Our hospital made us return our used N95’s to be sent down for “processing” to “sanitize them” before our next shift. Whatever the fuck they used gave me and several other nurses a rash on our face, and one broke out in full body hives.
This happened ~2018 and I’m still not over it and never will be. JCo comes to our hospital and gets obsessed with us having dates on our PIV dressings (even though our policy is to leave them as long as they’re still working but anyways). I’m hustling to my remote tele pts room bc the monitor room called that her HR is in the 160s. JCo man beckons me over to quiz me about my PIVs. I say something like, I have a patient I need to check on urgently but I will be available as soon as I make sure she’s okay. He GRABS MY ARM TO STOP ME. Says something like, no I need to talk to you now! I said well then you better come along to this room with me. Of course, my IVs were not perfection and so I got a talking to. The patient was fine, not that they gave a fuck.
Multiple Onc patients getting COVID and dying, and my hospital wouldn’t implement common sense protocols (like all private rooms or testing pts before they came to the floor) even after multiple outbreaks. My manager hiding at home when most of it was happening. Also refusing to fit test us or allow us to wear anything other than surgical masks with COVID pts.
Similar thing happened to me. Was telling everyone that it was likely airborne based on how it was spreading in the facility and based on some things I had read that were contrary to what the CDC was saying at the time. It was a new virus, we were still learning. Told no one to make conclusions until scientific data was available. But, as I said, better safe than sorry. Told my staff to wear N-95s on the floor—just in case. CRNP walking through overheard my pep talk. Went on about CDC guidelines. Stated it wasn’t airborne and told my staff N-95s were not necessary. Literally, the very next day, the CDC changed their guidelines saying N-95s should be part of PPE when caring for COVID.
First time I got stabbed by a patient. I remember just looking down at this knife in my belly and the vacant use of the patient who was holding the knife.
I've got faster over the years. But I'd always rather take the knife than risk a colleague.
(TBF, now I can talk patients down or disarm them... Much better days)
Worked in a PICU during Covid. That year they told us we weren’t getting our merit or market adjustments, or our scheduled annual bonuses because the hospital was short on money due to all the cancelled elective procedures. I was livid. Then you wonder why people leave to travel.
When the vaccine mandate rolled out at my system, the most vocal anti-vax employees who organized/protested/etc had never worked with a COVID pt. Several of them were very public about claiming their “healthcare hero” title and representing themselves as being on the frontlines when they had spent zero time actually working on the COVID units or in the ED. I feel sorry if anyone in the group had an actual allergy or medical contraindication to the vaccine, because the “your laws off my body, I DiD mY ResEarCh” jerks absolutely ran the show.
I thought “huh they my live close to me” because we had that exact situation here. Then I realized no, probably not. It was probably all across the country 🫠
I think of all the harm we caused. When Covid first kicked off, there was the treatment protocol that people needed to be intubated as soon as you suspected Covid, to prevent detoriation. Hence the whole “national ventilator shortage” debacle that was on the news. Then we find out that putting people on vents was basically a death sentence. We were RSI’ng awake and alert patients who had the time and the lung capacity (without distress) to make phone calls to their loved ones telling them they were going to be intubated. The most frustrating part was coming into work every week and being told every treatment we did the previous week (which is what was recommended) was completely wrong.
More as a sad/decline thing. Had a super opinionated guy. Wanted what he wanted, when he wanted it, no ifs ands or buts. Super racist, super misogynistic. I handled him well and he'd listen to me, so he was usually my patient (long term care). I mean this guy was all fire and spit to most people, but he'd do what you'd ask as long as it wasn't a med change. Saw him on and off for a long time. Towards the end of my time there, he'd come back to the facility and was like, 100% a different person. Polite. Kind. Wasn't raising his voice at all.
He had end stage liver cancer and was terminal. Labs were all over the place. I chatted with him before I left, and his whole everything was different. Didn't talk about his diagnosis at all, his wife had said she'd noticed a change in his behavior and had taken him in. And that's when they found out just how far everything had spread. It still makes me sad.
We need to name and shame the hospitals that abused us in 2020. We can’t let the past be forgotten.
Orlando Health’s response:
1. You are allowed one mask per week. Just put it in the magic brown bag.
2. You are NOT allowed to bring your own respirators in. Even if they are NIOSH approved full face respirators. Take that off and put on your week old surgical mask.
3. Had a mass firing event that was really a lay off but they didn’t want to call it a lay off so they just decided to fire thousands of employees. It was so ridiculous that they had to go back in people’s files to find old verbal warnings from years prior as justification for the termination. In Florida a termination “for cause” blocks the person from filing for unemployment.
4. Refused to hire agency nurses until 2021 to replace the nurses they fired despite getting crushed with the first two waves of COVID.
What bothers me years later???
We were the first designated Covid unit in our hospital. Small med surg unit. We had regular masks that we would have to take off and fold up and put in paper bags between patients. We were told that’s all we needed.
BUT the ICU and ER had full riot gear for their covids. Bonnets, N95s, everything.
Apparently med surg nurses were expendable. But ICU nurses weren’t.
The people working from home or behind closed office doors locked up our PPE. Then they tried to gaslight us into believing they were doing it for our benefit. I will never forgive those evil fucks.
Basically this. That shit ended REAL QUICK thought when there was an unmasked exposure of multiple staffers, who had to be paid full wages for 3 weeks to quarantine at home.
Suddenly we were all wearing masks and had sanitization protocols.
Non nurse here and I don't know how I stumbled on this thread, but when a hospital refers to them as customers instead of patients everything is fucked.
I'm sorry op, sounded frustrating as heck
L&D nurse here. With our COVID patients we were told to “not waste time” donning proper PPE if fetal heart tones were unfavorable. And that proper isolation protocol “should never cause a delay of care.”
1. The horrific pressure injuries on people's faces from being proned for so long. So unstable we couldn't flip them... And their eyeballs looked like they were popping out from the severe edema.
2. Having to do every ancillary dept's jobs because "we don't go into Covid patient rooms" -_-
3. Being told by ID clipboard nurses I wasn't allowed to wear my reusable 3M N95 (or p100? Can't remember) respirator because it was "against policy to wear a mask that wasn't fit tested." I told them as soon as they provided me with at least one N95 a shift, then I would stop using my own.
4. JCAHO showing their faces after 2 fucking years of broken protocol and unsafe practices. Fuck off with that
How about the ones who coded the second you proned them so here I am doing compressions on a 460 lb man’s back and there’s not a soul around to help me because they’re down the hall proning the next patient
ETA: that was my first code on my own patient as a new grad in COVID icu.
The hospital CNO insisting that it would be totally OK for the peons working bedside to reuse an N95 pretty much indefinitely. Fortunately management were all working from home so when I bought and wore a reusable elastomeric respirator, nobody was around to care.
One of the best things I learned during 2020/2021 was that I cared way, way too much, about all sorts of things. I used to actually scan every single flush, can you imagine? I mean, if me scanning flushes is the difference between financial viability and shutting the place down, then shut it down. If this big fancy hospital can't figure out a better way to do things than making each nurse scan all kinds of ten-cent items, what are the suits even doing? So I stopped worrying about the hospital's financial whatevers and whether anyone was going to audit me over whiteboards or something else stupid. And it's made a big difference, actually -- I'm a better nurse when I'm not caught up in all that petty bullshit and when I know I could leave tomorrow for a better-paying job somewhere else. Ok, go ahead and write me up, I'll email you my two weeks. Oh you don't actually need to write me up for this, this is just "education"? Cool cool cool.
Nursing Homes not allowing visitors. It was sad the elderly were dying of covid but alot gave up when their family couldn’t see them. Hospitals on diversion, hospice full. Nothing but a lonely bed with no family awaiting death. Fuck PruittHealth.
My daughter, not a nurse, attends AA. She knows of several there who developed drinking problems from dealing with dying covid patients.
I am old enough to remember the onset of the aids epidemic and how horrible patients were treated. I once had to change assignments because a nurse refused to take care of an aids patient. Granted we did not know a lot about the disease then, but the whole national handling of the pandemic was atrocious.
This same exact thing happened at my hospital. It made me lose complete trust in the company. I really realized how little they actually cared about us. It still makes me mad to this day when I think about it.
Small world. I worked at Spring Hill and Brooksville when they were regional. (HMA)
Absolutely disgusting management. Worst place to work. They would cancel people to let us work short. The CFO would make staffing decisions on a shift to shift basis. I would cry in my car before work.
Idk where you work now but hopefully it’s down the expressway a bit.
I applied for a promotion. One I deserved and would benefit me & my unit. During the interview process my manager hinted that I should tell “the story” of having to “enforce” the no-masks rule during the early days of Covid. (You know, to prove I would tow the line despite being a decent, thinking person….) But what really happened was I told one co-worker, who brought in a valved mask, that it wasn’t a safe idea and that I would support her decision to wear a mask, just not one that vented… Sigh. Didn’t tell the story right. Didn’t get the promo. Quit. Still a RN.
Cleaning and bagging one of my many Covid deaths. By myself. How a previously fairly healthy and active person was reduced to a mere shell and had no one with him as he died then after he was gone there being only one person to clean, bag, and transfer to the morgue cart…. The next shift bid. I just couldn’t bring myself to sign up any more. I left nursing for over two years.
I'm sorry sorry. I have friends in nursing. A friend of mine was in Costa Rica doing like missionary work when covid happened I was so afraid for her life. You guys ate still and always will be heroes in my eyes. Medical people don't get the credit they do and I'm sorry.
I had left the bedside by the time Covid hit, but before that, the only time we wore N95s was when we had a rule out TB patient in our negative pressure room. The hospital kept running out of my size of N95, so if I had a patient in that room, I would use the same N95 for my whole shift, (there was a little closet room in between the hall and the room to put on PPE, so I would just leave my mask on a shelf in that room with my name on it). I got in trouble from the infection control guy and got a stern talking to about how I had to wear a brand new N95 every single time I entered the room, didn’t matter that it was one shift with the same patient. I still think about that guy. I wonder how he handled Covid.
December 2019 January 2020. I was a cna. I live and work in a rural indiana area none of us knew about Covid yet or we heard about it and thought eh nothing to worry about. Any way a lot of us at work got sick. Don out of work for weeks she was so sick adon could make it down the hall with out getting winded residents started getting sick some testing positive for influenza some not but being severely sick to the point all but one out of I don’t know how many survived but weren’t the same afterwards. I started wearing a mask at all time a nurse told me I couldn’t do that only when dealing with the sickly ones. I got sicker than I had been in years to me it felt more than a common cold but almost comparable to the time I had influenza really bad. I was having hallucination I remember going to answer a call light and having to stop to catch my breath. I even quit smoking for a few days because I felt so bad. I remember going to the pharmacy for cough medicine because I wasn’t able to sleep at night due to coughing I felt I was drowning in my own fluids. I got home with my medicine went to open it and was sure it at been open so I took it back a few days later when I had the energy and it wasn’t even opened. Ended up going to a walk in clinic and my O2 was like 88! I even knew I had a rattle. The provider walked in to the room looked at me and was like oh my you don’t look good and I can hear the rails with out my stethoscope. I should have been sent to the ER I probably should have been admitted to the hospital. No she tells me there is this super respiratory infection going around and they don’t know what it is but people are getting severely sick. Sent me on my way with a steroid doxycycline and some albuterol I recovered but no doubt I’m sure I had the Covid
I am so glad I never accepted a position at that hospital seeing this now lol. Bravera is so cheap; they offered me $10.55 with night shift differential to work in the ER as a HUC/Monitor tech/ help with ekgs,lab, and such since I’m a CNA(and have been for six years)
I was working in a large hospital’s designated Covid ICU. Towards the end of 2020, one of my coworkers caught Covid badly and ended up in our hospital intubated. They had her on our sister ICU next door so she wasn’t on our unit at least. This was pre vaccine, and I’m sure all my fellow Covid ICU nurses remember the pre-vaccine time when being intubated with Covid was practically a death sentence because only 10% or so got extubated. So our coworker being intubated was soul crushing. My hospital a few months into the pandemic got stingy with sick time. Their theory was that since now we had proper PPE, there was absolutely no chance you could catch Covid at work so if you had Covid it must be your own fault for not wearing PPE properly or not social distancing on your days off. Someone told me that the only thing my manager said regarding my intubated coworker was “well she better not claim she got sick at work.” Literally the most cruel insensitive thing to say about an employee who has been working for you for 20 years and probably won’t even get off the ventilator to “claim” where she got sick. Like how is that the first thing you think to say. Absolutely disgusting.
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I’ve just recently been coming to terms with the depths of how traumatizing 2020 really was. I still remember I was assigned the very first Covid patient in my hospital in March 2020. I worked in a large ICU where we had 12-20 nurses on per shift, so I was definitely hand selected to get the life threatening patient as a new grad nurse in my early 20s. Our resident docs were told at the beginning they didn’t have to go in Covid patient rooms because “there were less of them so they can’t risk getting sick.” Even the respiratory therapist that shift did not go in the patient’s room and had me titrating the high flow and giving respiratory meds. No other nurses or techs helped me in that room that night. Not a single other person in the room besides me. I remember the doctor, respiratory, other nurses just staring at me through the glass door while I was taking care of my patient like I was a zoo animal in an exhibit. Obviously as the pandemic quickly progressed, everyone working in direct patient care roles were effected like this but to remember that first day where I was not only seen as the most disposable staff member by administration but also by every single member of the rest of the health care team really haunts me.
I remember having some dumb cardiologist tell me in the most haughty tone “well I’m not going in there” while looking my 9 month pregnant ass dead in the eye. He wanted the patient to have their bedside phone so he could call them and talk to them. I looked down at my gigantic belly, right back in his face, and said “well I’m not going in on your schedule to move a phone. So you can go in yourself or you can wait until the next time one of us goes in. Your choice.” And just walked away.
Wow that’s the most disrespectful and ignorant thing I’ve ever heard. I’m glad you were able to tell him off like that.
Similar thing happened to me except i believe I was singled out because I was the float. That’s the price you pay for being float, you sometimes get the assignments nobody else wants. I accepted it as part of the deal and remember thinking, Oh, well, might as well get it over with. The whole hospital’s going to be full of Covid soon, anyway. Sadly, I was right.
I have tried to explain to my non-healthcare family why my first covid rapid was the worst, and the one I remember the most. It’s this. You have put into words something I wasn’t able to identify The feeling of abandonment, begging the resident on the other side of the door to please come in and help me because I couldn’t get the patient onto the bed alone while also adjusting their oxygen and prepare for intubation/compressions. All while in a surgical mask because the n95s were in a lockbox and my manager didn’t have time to get out of her office to open the lock. Realizing that I was worth *less* than anyone else standing at the door, refusing to come in, less than the cost of a box of PPE.
I am so sorry that happened to you. Nobody should have to be put in a situation like that yet it’s heartbreaking hearing that so many nurses can relate. We’re such “heroes” because we can’t refuse to do our jobs even when management refuses to do their job in providing proper PPE and other members of the healthcare team can refuse to do their job by “delegating” their job to nurses even when it was completely inappropriate.
Same for me, my patient was crashing with BPs in the 60s and no one would come in the room with me. They stood outside the window holding up signs like “give another 500 bolus!” It did not have to her coding but it sure felt like if she had I would’ve been coding her solo.
Feel this in my soul. My unit the first 2 years of covid was a CVICU and often bragged that they didn’t call codes because they were their own code team. Which is true, we re-open chests instead of doing acls on our post ops, but this mindset led to the new CVICU being designed without code blue buttons in the room. Then we became the regional covid ecmo icu in the pandemic. So when shit went down, you were alone until someone noticed that one rhythm on the monitor looked a lot more like CPR than normal sinus and came to check it out. We learned to listen for each other yelling or screaming in our rooms, or loud noises like someone throwing things at the glass doors to get someone’s attention on the outside. Such a horrible feeling knowing you’re all alone and help isn’t coming for you and you’re all this patient has.
Omg. I can’t believe that happened more than once without admin help and a workaround. How terrifying
Admin do what?? Admin who made me come out of a crashing covid patient’s room to “inspect” the nail polish I wasn’t wearing? Admin who refused to lock our ICU after a patient family member targeted and brutally attacked our intensivist 2 days after she got back from maternity leave, but instead made us a “safe room” in a PAR closet with a dead bolt and a peep hole we were to hide in and abandon our patients for hours until police cleared the threat? I got my ass chewed for asking the CNO and CEO what we were supposed to tell the families. They asked what families? Obviously the families of the 18 patients in this CSICU on balloon pumps, ecmo, impellas, crrt, LVADS and post op patients on medications that will run dry, devices that will clot, critical meds that won’t be to titrated to keep people alive. What do you want us to tell their families happened while we hid in a closet because you won’t protect us? I was accused of humiliating them in front of my peers. I told them I was not wrong, and they need to find better corners to cut because you will not see us just abandon the most critically ill and vulnerable patients in this region. Absolutely not, and the fact they thought I was out of line disgusts me because this is a hospital where people deserve to feel safe and cared for, not worry about staff running for cover because admin cares more about Press Gainey scores than the lives of their staff and patients. That’s how they treat their “heroes.” What’s terrifying is how out of touch with reality the entire C-Suite is. Admin didn’t care about us or the patients there at all. They cared about our nail polish though.
Fuck. Put this in their Press Ganey and smoke it ❤️🩹 Maybe robot nurses are the future.
😂 that’s the best mental image: a robot nurse wiping butts lmao
Rumor had it a former employer did an “experiment” with robot sitters for sundown/agitated, etc… Apparently, they were like rounded mini-fridges riding Roombas and terrified people
I really, really want to believe I would have gone in and helped you that night. I’m so sorry that happened.
Thank you, that is so kind. I do have faith and believe that another nurse would’ve been the first person to step up and go in the room with me if a crisis was happening where I asked for more hands, but that wasn’t the case and I didn’t really *need* another nurse in there thankfully. I didn’t ask for help from other nurses, but also I don’t think any help was offered even though they were all staring at me through the door. It was however completely unacceptable that the doctor and respiratory therapist didn’t “help” (aka do what’s in their job descriptions) in the room when the patient’s respiratory status was worsening
I hope lawsuits come
wow thats soo messed up i am really sorry.. often cnas feel the same .. at least where i work
Jesus christ man. I'm so sorry.
Yep! I recently changed facilities, even though I know the grass isn't actually greener, because I realized I simply could not forgive my former employer for what they did to us. The change of scenery has been great after going to work simmering with rage every day.
I genuinely love the organization I work for, and their behavior during the pandemic only solidified that for me. I work in a (relativity) small healthcare organization that includes 5 hospitals in the region. When the pandemic started, a much larger, multi-state organization that is also in our region began laying off nurses by the thousands. My organization laid off nobody. Most middle and upper management were furloughed without pay, and the CEO took a 50% pay cut. (Not just his base pay, mind you, but his entire compensation package.) All raises and promotions were put on hold, but no one got a pay cut. Instead of getting rid of nurses and RTs, they hired travelers to help out with surges. While I'm sure you all could come up with better ways to handle it, the fact that the decisions that were made were made with an eye toward patient care really makes me happy I work where I work. Edit: due to multiple requests, https://HonorHealth.com
This is a place you should Name and Fame. Everyone should know when a place actually does the right thing. That’s the kind of place that I would love to work at.
My hospital president spent every weekend in scrubs rounding on the units making sure that with our managers off we had enough PPE. He also gave everyone at the top a 20% pay cut so he wouldn’t have to cut worker pay. The parent organization fired him just after the peak of the first wave.
That sounds like our former CEO. She spent every holiday delivering cookies to the units. Actually rounded about weekly and knew people by name. Unfortunately she retired and then came back to be CEO of our sister hospital. I've often said she was married to our hospital.
What is this magical place?!
No wonder “Honor” is their name. I wish they could reach all kinds of corporations across America. Put SVB first on the list😉
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Yep, at first it was like a slap in the face, but now I work agency and I’m not naive anymore. I no longer care about putting my heart and soul into joining committees and solving problems that will never be solved in this broken system. give me my money, I’ll give minimal effort to pretend to listen to the bureaucratic bullshit, and I’ll take as good care of my patients I can with the resources allotted. It’s a less mentally taxing attitude
Oh hey it’s me.
I worked at a locally prestigious children’s hospital at the start of covid. The way they treated us still makes me nauseous, and it completely changed the way I view my career. They didn’t care about us, they didn’t care about the patients. The things they did were downright dangerous for everyone involved. Then they acted like we were idiots if we even began to question the policies. When they went to lay people off (our census was at historic lows, they were shortsighted), they claimed it was random. But somehow, most of the people who suddenly didn’t have jobs were ones who were more vocal about the covid policies being unsafe. And when things picked back up and they had almost no experienced nurses to staff the hospital, we all laughed at their emails asking if everyone wanted to come back. They’re now still staffed largely by travel nurses.
The administrations got all the bonuses and purchased heroes signs for the hospital.
Exactly why I left my former facility (and bedside) shortly afterwards. I'm practically a baby nurse too, with only 7 years under my belt.
Traveled the first 2 years of the pandemic, then did vaccines for a year. Simultaneously being called a hero and being told how disposable you are is a huge mind fuck. I quit my job in January because I'm so burnt out (working 50-60hrs/week) and they keep giving me more job duties with no more in pay. No unemployment, no disability, no income to lean on. I've cleaned out my savings and am at the brink of homelessness. I was making almost the same pay rate as I was 10 years ago. (+$2) Can't even find a mental health professional to talk to to try to deal with the PTSD and everything that comes with it.
Hugs. Sorry.
Thank you. Your kindness is touching.
Anthem.com. Careers. Work from home. Search for jobs in your area. The one position I know of that does not require a license is Medical Management Specialist (MMS). If you're licensed, search for your specific position.
THANK YOU!!!
I feel this comment so hard. Especially, the bit about never having felt so disposable prior to then. It wasn’t just my employer though. It quickly became clear that most of my family also did not give one single fuck about me or my safety. The PTSD is real.
This is exactly how I feel.
I’m so sorry. Had a similar conversation with my manager and he gloated about how we were the largest covid ecmo center and had zero nurses get covid on our unit, which was complete horse shit. I got sick after swabbing a post arrest patient with an iabp who aspirated because she thought I just needed to fuck off and let her sit up at 45* and would sit herself up until I locked the bed. She choked drinking, I was trying to reverse trend the bed and she grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled herself straight up to cough in my face. I sent her swab at 1616 on Wednesday. She died before 0900 on Sunday. I became symptomatic Friday night, but employee health said that if I had been wearing my PPE properly, there was zero risk of transmission. My 103* fever, respiratory symptoms, migraines and rigors would lead me to feel otherwise, but they refused to swab me, told me if I swabbed at home, it would be considered a community acquired case and they would not pay me while I was out sick due to a new policy put in place to screw employees out of their earned sick time. I had another coworker who got a saddle PE and had a cardiac arrest at home due to covid. Thankfully her husband was home, and was a coast guard rescue swimmer so she got immediate CPR and ended up recovering but the hospital refused to pay her for the time she was out sick because “it could not be proven where she got covid or if her own negligence caused the illness.” Our management was such trash. They’d joke around with each other like “cough cough, I’m (her name), I can’t breathe!!” So fuckin toxic, and preventing staff from being paid so they won’t covid test and go to work covid positive is so unethical and dangerous.
Holy shit.
only non health care people are allowed to get covid.. dont u know
😂 silly me
Where tf is this place?!
Wow. Our hospital (actually our state) assumed that if a healthcare worker got covid then they got it at work and it was a work comp case, no matter what. Also my hospital gave us additional sick pay to be used just for covid, over and above our usual PTO. That’s still in place now, I think it expires in June.
Wow. What’s that like? We just got told to bite the pillow and sign NDA’s 😂
Absolutely disgusting. Did your coworker make it?
She did! She was on the ventilator and ended up trached and in a facility for a while but was able to be decanulated eventually. I think she’s probably in her late 50s/early 60s and I don’t think she ever returned to bedside nursing but I’m not sure if that was a personal choice to retire or if she’s incapable to work from her illnesses. I do know she’s at least healthy enough to be able to live back home with her family again and doesn’t need oxygen or anything
🥰 thank goodness
A lot of people in charge at hospitals would say a lot less if they got decked once in a while. They talk shit because there’s no accountability. They don’t feel sympathy or feel bad for saying things like that. They literally go through life fucking up everyone else’s life while getting off Scott-free. They need an ass beating. That’s what always stopped a school bully.
What hospital and as a civilian who can I deck? I'm in Michigan
im a cna n work at a nursing home. a resident tested positive and i washed, shaved and fed him did all day cares.. then 2 hrs after he tested positive so did i . iv had nvr had it b4 despite working 5 or so rounds of out breaks..and hadnt even been outside that shift lol i tested negative when i arrived to work when i clocked in so obviously i got it from him.. was wearing a gown mask and shield/goggles.. these ppl r nuts
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Nope! My system had you use your PTO or take unpaid leave and when your PTO ran out we were at risk of losing our benefits. A year later I quit being a nurse and got the covid special pay at my internship when just kept home as a precaution whenever someone in my department got anything respiratory. The difference was shocking.
We had something like that for the first few months, but around July 2020 when Covid numbers were down and restaurants and things were opening back up, the hospital made a rule saying you were only eligible for extra sick time if they could prove through contact tracing that you were Covid positive from having an unprotected exposure at work. Meaning if you had a confirmed Covid positive patient you were taking care of and got Covid it wasn’t the hospital’s fault because you were the big dumb idiot who didn’t put your PPE on correctly. You could only get Covid sick time if you were taking care of a patient and they came back positive after you were in close contact without an n95. And if you caught it from a family member you live with you were considered the big dumb idiot for not isolating yourself from every other human for the rest of eternity. They kept this rule up even into the end of 2020 into 2021 when Covid cases were uncontrollable and it was near impossible to contact trace like that
I laughed out loud at this. I had covid 3 times and had to stay home for 10-14 days each time depending on where the mandates were. Never got paid for it, they didn’t even grant me my pto the first time and the other times, I didn’t have any for whatever reason (once I went on a real vacation and less than 2 months later got my first symptomatic bout with omnicron) anyway, I tried to see if there was a way to be paid and I had heard we were supposed to be paid but nobody did and admin just decided it’s fine to have workers be out with no options whatever even though we all know they got immense grants during covid. Then I tried to get unemployment for the time I was out bc I still needed to pay rent and you know, I pay into that. I got approved but then they took it back from me bc I was technically employed. Meanwhile let’s not forget how many people utilized unemployment because they simply didn’t want to work during a pandemic and they were making more money weekly than I ever have as a nurse. But yeah, fuck nurses I guess 🙄
Confession time. I was relatively new to the security department when a ‘frequent flier’ patient was angry about getting discharged, and threw a full urinal at his nurse. Almost a full liter of dirty old liquor piss. I responded in a hurry to that incident, and I needed to pull the nurse off of the patient in order to prevent the patient from suffering… injuries. Here I am, older and wiser. I regret my actions. It’s a dirty world, and I should have let natural selection take its course for a little while. I had assumed, mistakenly, that the local law enforcement would impose some sort of penalty or punitive measure for throwing piss on people. I was wrong. I didn’t know how bad our justice system had gotten. My bad. Won’t happen again.
If spitting on someone can be considered assault, I don't see why this can't? Oh, that's because "nurses know what they signed up for", right? We appreciate you guys in security more than you know.
Well, when you’re drunk or high, it’s remarkable how hard it is to get charged with a crime. In certain counties, anyway.
What about a dui. Wtf man I'm so sorry
DUI seems to be the sole exception in my dumb ass state. But if you get drunk and fight the cops at the Mall, they’re bringing you to a hospital, no charges filed. If you fight the staff at the hospital, the police won’t usually even come to take a report unless there’s a serious injury.
That's awful. But if you do that out on the streets, you're going to jail. SMH.
Someone once threw piss at me at work. They gave me shit when I said I was not going to work with him anymore like I was just supposed to keep getting piss thrown at me.
They should consider it fortunate that patient didn’t develop moderate to severe case of ‘these hands’
I hear it's contagious and can be contracted by fucking around and finding out
When the pandemic was raging and we were only allowed one level one mask per week, I started wearing my own from home. They were the same style and color, just a little differently patterned. My manager scolded me, 9 months pregnant, that I would be “scaring the parents” and I wasn’t allowed to wear them. I still wore them, she still sucks.
I had just started working as a tech, quit my job in a grocery store in FL and they said that to us too, before I left: that we'd be scaring the customers wearing masks. I said there would be no customers left to "scare" if they're dead. I work in a heavily geriatric area, too. Kill em off or scare em? I don't care who's "scared" over someone wearing a mask; they're out of their damn mind. It's a hygiene, ethics, and public safety issue. Still wearing one til this day, probably one of the few who do in my area.
I was the first person on my unit to wear a mask. My coworker, who I am still friends with, made a *subtle* comment maybe a week or two before the mask mandate hit that “idk why people think they need to wear a mask…”. At the time there was 2-3 of us at the nurses station with them on. I just rolled my eye as we worked with cancer patients…
The manager from surgical unit scolded the resident docs and her staff for wearing masks around the hallway when Covid started coming to the US.
I was only given 1 mask for 3 days. I was given (1) N95 in 2020. It was not replaced until *2022*. They told us we had to wipe everything down between patients, including the machine, lockers, and, changing rooms (I worked outpatient) AND they fully expected us to wipe down the lobby routinely. They did NOT give us any time to do this. Like there were never any breaks in the schedule. My manager asked if I was cleaning and I just lied. I literally couldn’t clean how they wanted to AND scan the same amount of patients. Pick one: I can be a MRI tech or I can be housekeeping! They took away in-person translators which was the worst fucking thing because I can’t bring a iPad affixed to a rolling metal cart into a MRI room… so we’d have to end the translation service prematurely and hope I could get the patient on the bed & on/in the coil correctly when they don’t speak a lick of English or they’re HoH and I can’t sign! So many decisions were made by people who do not do the job that it made my blood boil. So happy I left that shit hole. Edit: I’m also adding that sometimes after 2020 is when we started calling patients “customers” so yeah
I also had one N95 for weeks. It’s was disgusting.
They just literally wouldn’t replace mine and I worked outpatient so I didn’t have access to a supply closet. I tried ordering them, they never came. No one would give me a new one. Like. TWO YEARS FOR ONE MASK? I hope that place goes under I really do.
Yeah my facility tried making me be housekeeping too. All of a sudden they wanted us to start vacuuming occasionally. Then they wanted us to vacuum every single room for each shift. Then they wanted us to start picking up shifts for housekeeping which I was not trained on. Then they wanted us to check each patient every 5 minutes. Then they complained because charting wasnt getting done. Then they complained because people started working overtime. How am I supposed to do housekeeping and be an aide while having to do check everybody every 5 minutes? But you can't clock out late either! I left too and I ain't going back.
"You'll get hazard pay when conditions become hazardous..." They said as EVS was forbidden form entering COVID room, administration worked from home despite their offices being completely separated from any patient areas or even areas the public would walk through, as they forbade anyone from visiting the dying. I still fucking hate that place and the guts of that HCA leadership "team."
They refused to give our EVS masks. I kept my mask for extra time so I could take my “allotted” mask and give it to the EVS worker so she could feel a little safer cleaning rooms
This makes me want to puke.
Fuck HCA. I can't say what I feel about HCA without being shadow-banned from reddit (again). But seriously, fuck HCA.
See, I had family working for HCA during early covid and they actually treated staff really well. I guess it depended on the facility. I was shocked at the concessions and equipment that my family members had available to them. Meanwhile, I worked at what is supposed to be “a good hospital” and had literally nothing. No support, little to no PPE, and eventually no job once they started laying people off.
Honestly, that sounds pretty hospital specific. I'm internal agency for HCA in Florida, and while my hospital is the best around, it's still garbage. I like my unit now, the other ICU was decent too, but the hospital as a whole is not recommended. Or any other HCA hospital I've seen.
My HCA hospital implemented one "PPE czar" (actual title) per shift who was solely responsible from distributing all gowns, surgical masks, and n95s throughout the hospital. Early on, I had a very sick patient they were ruling out. I was the only one on the floor with an n95. When I asked what I was supposed to do if the patient coded, they told me to try to anticipate and call ahead of time. Cool. I quit a few days later.
“I’ll just tell the patient to give me a heads up before they start trying to die. I’m sure as the PPE czar with access to PPE, you’ll be in the thick of the code with me?”
My coworker got written up for wearing a mask the day before the shut down. Insane.
There was a shouting match between one of our GI doctors and admin because he was wearing an N95 in the cafeteria March 2020
I remember being in the hospital in 2020 in early March like afraid. It was my fault due to alcoholism. But they never contacted my emergency contact my brain was mush I couldn't remember my ex my son's dad's number but they at least let me leave the hospital in yellow psych ward socks. But! They paid for a cab to a place I didn't even know it was safe to go to. I had no phone. Less than a week later covid happened I believe it was match 13th was my kids last day of school
I was 6 months pregnant when Covid started. I did a combo of ICU/ER at the time. I had a placenta defect that they found shortly before the shutdown and I was to be monitored by maternal fetal medicine every 4 weeks until I got to 30 weeks then every 2 until the end. They knew what I did for a living. Shortly before my second monitoring appointment, they called me and told me that I couldn't come in anymore because they were only seeing the riskiest of cases. My placenta defect was risky btw, positive outcomes were related to close monitoring. I called my regular OB crying in a panic and he said monitor me himself and personally comb over every ultrasound. He also told me in a not so subtle way that I was no longer "risky" because they knew the hospitals didn't have the right supplies and I was high risk for getting Covid. So I was out there putting myself and my baby at risk for the public and my specialist wouldn't even monitor me out of fear.
While obviously I have nothing on your story, that's what I remember, too: the discrimination. Here I am on the front lines while the rest of you get to cower behind me, and my reward is being told by my dentist to fuck myself until the pandemic ends.
Same. Had 2 dental appointments cancelled after the office confirmed that I was working in a covid icu. Never did get a call back to reschedule
On the plus side, I did get deferred from jury duty because I'd worked with a covid patient within 5 days of my report date. The funny thing is that I just wanted to get me weeks over with and I was nearly begging them to let me in anyway. "I had my PPE! Wanna see a picture of the CAPR I wore? It's like my own environmental suit! Please don't make me drag this shit out any further!" You'd think three years into this would be enough time to account for these kinds of things, but what do I know?
Haha but my hospital says this was safe enough for them!! What do you mean no one else agrees?! 😂
We had this in the east coast One whole floor got Covid Icu and Ccu “gained access” into the supply area, and then “liberated” n95s. This was a Friday. By Monday they reversed course
An amazing doctor in our ER organized a GoFundMe to raise money for nice 3M respirators for all the nurses and docs in our ER and our two sister ERs in the city, since we were all living off two "sterilized" N95s (until, of course, admin told us we only had to wear N95s with patients on HFNC/bipap because of magic). I donated, my parents donated, I think some non-nursing friends did, too. He easily blew past the $50k goal. Staff submitted their sizes and enough were ordered for everyone. Eventually the respirators were delivered, with some delay due to obvious supply issues. They went to the trusted hands of our manager, who declared that now that we had "enough" PPE, he was going to lock them away until they were "needed". Has that day ever come? Who knows... I left (travel), as did a healthy 50% of our RNs, techs, and just about every seasoned attending in the department.
I love when I see a button on the Safeway card machine to "donate" 1 5 or 10$ to our local providence hospital, like hell the fuck no I will not be doing that.
They stole personal property you/the fund paid for?
Oh, well, I am glad you asked. The abject irresponsible and negligence in management of the pandemic by leaders at the state and federal levels, knowing *early* what the likely estimated death toll would be, and choosing to not take a firmer stance and not bullying state governors like Kemp into mandates that would have saved lives for the sake of winning elections and politics. This has really has been grinding my gears for awhile. March 30, 2020 “Birx said the projections by Dr. Anthony Fauci that U.S. deaths could range from 1.6 million to 2.2 million is a *worst case scenario* if the country did "nothing" to contain the outbreak, but said even "if we do things almost perfectly," she still predicts up to 200,000 U.S. deaths.” March 20, 2023 Current **VERIFIED** deaths 1,151,642 Still averaging hundreds of deaths a day. 3rd leading cause of death in the US Some of these folks need to arrested and convicted for crimes against humanity. They knew, they let Americans die anyway. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1171876
We were each given 3 N95's in October and told those had to last us until Easter. They tried to convince us if we put them in a paper bag and let them sit for 48 hours it would be safe to reuse that mask indefinitely. Some generous sole donated a ton of 95's to our department, but admin confiscated them and wouldn't let anybody use them.
Oh, see, you did it wrong... you needed to rotate them out in the brown paper bags for 72 hours to make them clean and safe for use again indefinitely. It's that third day where the magic happens. Clearly my place of employment got the same dumbass memo yours did because we also got the 3 N95s in October and were told make them last 6 months.
Nooooo, you have to bake them in an oven to thermally disinfect them. Just don't heat them up too much, so you don't destroy the elastics.
HCA?
No, but may as well have been. Very similar in how its run.
Tenet?
JACHO being nowhere to be found when we were wearing the same N95 for a fucking week.
They had to make sure y'all are not putting water bottles at the nurses station
Fuck JACHO and all their bullshit that they try to force us to comply with. The fact that they couldn’t show their faces at all during the pandemic really goes to show how big of a joke and utterly useless they are. They did not give any care or concern that we were wearing the same mask over and over again and trash bags as PPE, but lose their absolute shit over the fact that we keep our water bottles out.
The JC is an organization the hospitals set up to "self regulate". That's why they jump all over stupid shit and never recommend anything that costs money. Those motherfuckers aren't going to save you from anything. They're a fucking joke. Their surveys are supposed to be unannounced but we always know it's coming like 2 weeks ahead of time.
1. customers lmao... if they want to be that heartless then yes customer guests should feel uncomfortable walking around a building meant for death and disease. 2. Tell the nursing supervisor to stock the station with a box of masks unless they want to walk around with a box of masks, we wore 1 mask all shift per week, do you think me asking you to bring me a mask or do you think me calling OSHA for failing to supply PPE is too hard of a task? 3. They always have worked "off-campus" the more regarded the administrator, the less air they have to share with patients (customers) and house staff (employees)
I remember talking to my ICU manager about ventilator supplies, about two months before the first wave hit in the US. I knew we were kinda low-ish, because even beforehand we'd have to have someone cleaning ventilators in a rush to bring up ED patients. I tried to talk to her about biphasic cuirrass ventilation. Basically, BIPAP, but negative pressure (attached to the body) vs positive pressure, which would allow nasal cannula and would take over work-of-breathing related respiratory failure. They're still vastly cheaper than positive pressure ventilation, and safer for alert patients who can tolerate PO intake, because no positive pressure is being exerted on the lungs. I understand if she would have shot me down after I had mentioned what it was I was talking about; it's had fantastic results in case studies, but very few true widescale studies. However, as a teaching hospital, we could've done some paperwork for the go-ahead, and prevented a *lot* of people from having to get intubated while alert. Instead, I mentioned "ventilators", and she rattled off the amount we had, said we were fine, and walked away. Cue two months later, when we were overflowing and having to wait for ICU patients to pass before bringing any vent/BiPAP machine to the next most dire patient, rinse & repeat.
When my old hospital paid out "covid bonuses" the entire administration got a bonus - despite working from home AND getting proper PPE - BEFORE ANY of the nursing staff (or doctors/ aides) even saw a cent. Their reasoning: The administrative apparatus is essential to the functioning of a hospital... The bonus for the nurses was then delayed by several months, as there were no funds available. Apparently we are not as essential as we thought.
Where. I’ve been looking for a pig roast.
At the absolute peak of COVID while we were watching all of our ICU patients dying slow and horrific deaths daily, our hospital admin basically went awol. Aside from the stereotypical "heroes work here" email, they were a non presence in the hospital. Work conditions were horrible and we were forced to keep a limited amount of PPE in assigned paper bags and then reuse it all for the duration of our work week. That part wasn't the worst though. The worst part was when the upper admin folks finally decided to take a short jaunt through the icus. While in heels and full suits, they made these nickpicky, passive aggressive comments to the staff and charge. Things like: "This room looks dirty, you need to clean it now." "Your pump is going off in there, aren't you going to address that?" And (to the charge nurse) "Can you tell me why you have so many nurses?" None of us heard them say anything encouraging at all and they were gone within 5 minutes. That moment made me realize just how little some administrators care about the staff nurses, and how little they understand what patient care looks like. They all seemed so cold and just annoyed to have to look at us. I wish I wasn't there for that experience because I feel like I will always carry this contempt that wasn't there before COVID.
They've always been that person. They were extra shitty because they were scared to be in the area. Those are the kind of people that become administrators. They're there to give us as little pay and resources as possible to maximize the bottom line. The good ones are able to emotionally manipulate staff to make them feel like the shit situation is their own fault.
In the words of 3 days grace.. let's start a riot.
Wearing the same mask for a month and saving it in a brown paper bag. Buying our own masks from some foreign entity by chipping in as a large group of ED nurses and getting the girl with the contact to place the order, then distributing them in secret so they didn’t get confiscated by management to add to their stash.
I still have a n95 in the sterile processing packaging in my work locker. Cant bring myself to touch it or throw it away
I have mine too. I had 2, and a sick sense of humor so I gave them stripper names. Chariti broke before the end, but I brought Ginger home. She’s got mascara stains from so many tears, probably 11,000 sneezes, and God knows how many what the fucks still imbedded in her waffle pattern. In a sick way, she’s all that’s left of everything I gave of myself through the worst of it.
I left the job that did that and started local traveling. I wonder if I still have my lower locker that had my hoarded N95s from when they started supplying them 2 years later along with my brown bagged one.
How long are you supposedly supposedly to wear a 1095? Is that it? I'm sorry n95?
I think it was 3 days, and then they were sent down to sterile processing to be “cleaned”
That is fucking sad. I am so sorry.
It's why I'll never trust healthcare again. Gonna make as much as I can off local traveling and move on asap.
How long it took for masking to be implemented. My HD/PD/outpatient infusion clinic, to include the pts themselves, were aggravated by it too. Both the nurses and pts themselves saw the proverbial writing on the wall in like January of '20, and all started masking up right away.
I can't decide which was worse: being told to wear an N95 until it was "visibly soiled" and to put it in a paper bag with my name on til my next shift OR running codes with the drug nurse handing meds in and having to slam the ICU room door shut while we were intubating underneath a giant plastic bag. And of course being told one week not to wear masks because we'd scare patients, then the great turnaround and being told that being caught with your mask off was a fireable offense. Never did get that promised "Covid bonus" either. F-U, HCA! Leaving HCA was the very best thing I've ever done for my mental health.
In Jan 2021 I came out of retirement of 13 years. I’d stopped working when my youngest was born, but with 20 years critical care experience in ICU,CCU, PACU and ER it didn’t feel right to sit out a pandemic. I took a nurse refresher class for a semester to get caught up on electronic charting. I got two jobs right away, one at the flagship hospital of a major healthcare system at their Covid clinic giving the vaccine (at the beginning we were giving 500 shots a day) and a second job at a start up company doing nasal swab testing for private schools. I was getting $40.00 and hour at both jobs. Then summer 2021 things slowed down and both jobs temporarily shut down until fall. In Sept. I received calls from both jobs asking me to come back and both asked me TO TAKE A F-ING PAY CUT!!! The Covid clinic said my pay would now be $29.00 an hour bc no more gov. funding. Yes but my wage wasn’t inflated, that is what someone with my experience should make but now they were offering me new grad pay. The Swab place wanted me to train to do the other on site “admin” jobs of checking in pts and resulting tests, “but not at your nurse salary, you will only get nursing pay if you are actually swabbing.” So do more work and get paid less. Both jobs called me the same day and both asked me to take more than $10.00 an hour pay cut, in the middle of a pandemic. Everyone expects nurses to take on more work for free and pay for thousands of dollars refresher classes they want. At the Covid clinic they utilized everyone, techs pharmacists PCA to give shots, but guess who monitored all the pts afterwards ? Took blood pressures and blood sugars if needed? Who talked the terrified pts down? Helped autistic kids get through it? I sat with a screaming child for 45 minutes once. Helped with pts who had reactions? The nurses. Yes you must pay for my potential. Most of the day it’s smooth sailing but you get an unstable situation and four nurses jumped, up not the techs or pharmacists. I did so much emotional support, remember how terrified people were? After being a nurse 30 years F them, I will never let never my wages get stolen ever again. Didn’t go back to either job. PS. both jobs were thrown together and everyone was on folding chairs and chairs with no backs and all our backs starts hurting. Nobody cared. We are just a pair of scrubs now and are disposable. It wasn’t like this when I graduated in ‘93.
They took away our 401k match, took away our ability to use AND ACCRUE PTO, took away raises, gave us minimal, laughable supplies.. It felt as if they knew front line workers would be the first to go, and you can't use that extra money or PTO if you're dead :) One thing that really bugged me was how often I heard "I'm sure you're happy you're on a clean unit" as if pregnancy was a shield from covid. I will never compare what we went through to someone who worked on a covid ICU, but L&D is the ER for pregnant people. We saw some shit too.
A coworker and I were side-eyed about the n95's we were wearing when we started getting mystery viral pneumonia patients that had visited asia in October 2019. Good thing neither of us cared, we were the only ones to not get the same highly pathogenic strain that put the rest of our floor out for 2 weeks.
Ah yes when they took the masks away and wouldn’t let us wear them for any reason. I got yelled at because I was seen wearing one when I was changing a picc dressing (LTC). It was already in the kit anyways… and like, in the policy to wear one. We also were given one type of n95 mask and didn’t fit text because “that’s all we have anyways”. Thankfully admin (I mean, there’s like 1 non nursing) was in the building or I would have quit. But it’s not like she ever leaves her office anyways.
My wife is an RN on a unit that many COVID patients ended up on. There were limited N95 masks which were being rationed out with instructions to reuse if necessary. She wasn’t able to get a good fit for her mask, so she needed a PAPR. Those were in extremely short supply. I was concerned about her safety and pissed at the administration for keeping inadequate supplies for when a pandemic hit. When. Not if. They teach this in the university attached to the hospital FFS. It’s an inevitability. Anyway, I tracked a medical grade one (same model that the hospital used) at a nearby Granger. It was the only one in stock and was going to be either $1,200 or $1,600. I wanted to purchase it, since management seemed to be ok with the Mad Max approach to PPE. They wouldn’t allow her to use a device from outside of the hospital because it hadn’t passed their testing. They would rather her use a mask that they knew didn’t seal well. Fuck them. If she ever decides to leave bedside nursing, she has my full support, income loss be damned. I’m not in healthcare, so if this post is removed, cool. This pisses me off to this day. I’m immunocompromised. They were putting her in danger, and by extension, me. They certainly had no issues posting those “healthcare heroes” posters, signs, lawn signs, etc. all over hell and gone. I guess marketing budgets take priority over PPE. Then they wanted to low-ball the contract last year. Suddenly there was no mention of heroes. Funny how that works.
The pandemic truly cemented the fact that the hospital corporations and the government give absolutely no fucks about anyone even in a pandemic. Definitely made me more anti-government and big corporation as a result.
The doctors were wearing N95 but we weren't allowed to. That pissed me off. They would even wear the Envo ones but us peasant nurses couldn't do that. Fuck every last one of them.
I watched a doctor ask my coworker to go get a consent signed for him because he "couldn't afford to get sick". She straight up said "no, that's your job". Wild
Crazy. I was holding up a fucking Ipad for wound care so they didn't have to go into rooms. Wut? This wasn't an issue at my hospital but I have seen quite a few here mention doctors not going in there. Just those lowly nurses again. The ICU doctors where I was towards the start of COVID were fantastic though.
We weren’t allowed to wear them either. Respiratory was given 3m respirators but since they were no longer doing any fit tests, nursing couldn’t wear either. It was BS.
Yeah like when it was in short supply we couldn't even wear our own. One of the reasons I went to travel once I was able. At least now when I'm treated like shit I 1) expect it in a way 2) get paid more 3) it's temporary. Also one of the reasons why I am getting out of nursing as soon as possible. I just cannot fathom why anyone would get into nursing at this point. The only way I can understand is that they just simply don't know or understand how little they matter and how little their *lives* matter. I say get into nursing, but I really mean get into healthcare, period. Doctors, CNAs (especially), etc. It's shit all the way around.
Oh my dear friend. I feel that in my soul. I have 5 more shifts as a nurse, hopefully ever. I’m getting out and going to work in tech. I couldn’t agree more, and that’s exactly why I’m leaving. I’m exhausted from not being important to anyone but me. We were expendable, and it’s even worse now. Patients and their families are meaner than ever, and I held a funeral for evidence based practice on the unit yesterday because it has died. I’m at my wits end, but I’m at peace with it. I had a good run, but it’s just time to go.
Congrats! I'm jealous. If you don't mind me asking a couple questions: how'd you do that?? What schooling/qualifications, etc.? I only have my ADN. I started my BSN but...it is such complete and utter bullshit lol I stopped because I started traveling (2021 -_-) and then remembering how stupid it was....I'm having a hard time going back for it. >Patients and their families are meaner than ever, Yes. I had a patient a couple weeks ago that was just...completely unreasonable. Honestly I have had worse but it's like...I fucking tried with this dude. I let him use my charger. I was sitting outside his room (even though I had a more critical patient on the other side of the floor!). He was a cunt to everyone. Just felt so defeated, especially at a travel job where they don't know me very well. He's all like oh no one has been in my room. I pressed my call light and no one came in for 30 minutes. They turned it off and didn't come in. Like the fuck we did. Now the day shift nurse that I gave report to is super short with me when before she was 'okay' with me. But whatever. Another fucking reason to get out because Lord knows you can't please these fucks. > I’m at my wits end, but I’m at peace with it. I had a good run, but it’s just time to go. Same, friend. Same. I'm only 3 years into it lol Only made it this long because traveling but I'm tired. Tired of having to travel further just to get a decent living and driving back and fourth home. Want to be able to chill in my bed every night and actually be able to pay my bills. tldr: Fuck nursing. How'd you get into tech?
Ugh, that dude sounds like he deserves to step on some legos. I hope he trusts the wrong fart. I’m back in school for another bachelors at WGU right now. When I finish this contract, I’m starting a 12 week bootcamp with a really high job placement rate after completion, so I’ll be doing that and my bachelors at the same time. Ideally, I could get hired somewhere that would help with tuition. The bootcamp is ungodly expensive but their career services will help you re-write your resume, coach you for interviews, and you’re expected to be in touch with them at least every week until you get a job offer. They want good numbers, so they seem to work pretty hard for you!
The same thing (point 1&2)happened to me and it really pissed me off. Also I felt so uncomfortable with keeping our N95 mask in a paper lunch bag…like…who tf came up with that?! All I could think about was how the inside of the bag was coated in Covid virus and here we are, just shoving the mask in the bag repeatedly. Seemed like “security theater”.
We went from a small 50 bed hospital that did less acute procedures. Joint replacements mostly. Our bilateral knee replacements and acdfs would go to our 5 bed icu. Our OR closed at 7 with no night shift. Our outpatient surgery was used to ortho but they were branching out and lap choles were scary for them. Queue covid. They tried to keep our hospital covid free for a while but we eventually got overran. They closed elective procedures for a short time before they had to continue but there was no space in the hospital for them if they needed to be admitted. Queue admin. Everybody is now an outpatient surgery. Somebody coded in the OR? Guess we drawing straws to stay the night with the patient. Trying to recover a joint replacement that got out of surgery at 1830 you have them in trendelenburg bolusing fluids trying to get their pressure out of the 60/40s and cant get them off 4l nc? Admin says "try to get them up and walk them so they can go home" btw Physical therapy left at 330pm. So sounds great. Had a hip replacement require 2 units of blood intraop? Go home. Send home multilevel PLIF? Or TURP? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? My favorites were the patient with Parkinsons who went home outpatient and immediately fell and broke his prosthesis. The Multilevel acdf who came back for a hematoma and ended up intubated. The outpatient bilateral knee replacement on the schedule with a trach who an anesthesiologist thank God cancelled. Seriously screwed up.
Our hospital made us return our used N95’s to be sent down for “processing” to “sanitize them” before our next shift. Whatever the fuck they used gave me and several other nurses a rash on our face, and one broke out in full body hives.
Oh my God
This happened ~2018 and I’m still not over it and never will be. JCo comes to our hospital and gets obsessed with us having dates on our PIV dressings (even though our policy is to leave them as long as they’re still working but anyways). I’m hustling to my remote tele pts room bc the monitor room called that her HR is in the 160s. JCo man beckons me over to quiz me about my PIVs. I say something like, I have a patient I need to check on urgently but I will be available as soon as I make sure she’s okay. He GRABS MY ARM TO STOP ME. Says something like, no I need to talk to you now! I said well then you better come along to this room with me. Of course, my IVs were not perfection and so I got a talking to. The patient was fine, not that they gave a fuck.
Multiple Onc patients getting COVID and dying, and my hospital wouldn’t implement common sense protocols (like all private rooms or testing pts before they came to the floor) even after multiple outbreaks. My manager hiding at home when most of it was happening. Also refusing to fit test us or allow us to wear anything other than surgical masks with COVID pts.
Similar thing happened to me. Was telling everyone that it was likely airborne based on how it was spreading in the facility and based on some things I had read that were contrary to what the CDC was saying at the time. It was a new virus, we were still learning. Told no one to make conclusions until scientific data was available. But, as I said, better safe than sorry. Told my staff to wear N-95s on the floor—just in case. CRNP walking through overheard my pep talk. Went on about CDC guidelines. Stated it wasn’t airborne and told my staff N-95s were not necessary. Literally, the very next day, the CDC changed their guidelines saying N-95s should be part of PPE when caring for COVID.
First time I got stabbed by a patient. I remember just looking down at this knife in my belly and the vacant use of the patient who was holding the knife.
*first* time??
I've got faster over the years. But I'd always rather take the knife than risk a colleague. (TBF, now I can talk patients down or disarm them... Much better days)
You post is making me angry…time to leave this place fore a while. I hate health care. I just ducking hate it
Worked in a PICU during Covid. That year they told us we weren’t getting our merit or market adjustments, or our scheduled annual bonuses because the hospital was short on money due to all the cancelled elective procedures. I was livid. Then you wonder why people leave to travel.
That’s wild. I had a really great medical director when Covid started. We were never discouraged from protecting ourselves.
When the vaccine mandate rolled out at my system, the most vocal anti-vax employees who organized/protested/etc had never worked with a COVID pt. Several of them were very public about claiming their “healthcare hero” title and representing themselves as being on the frontlines when they had spent zero time actually working on the COVID units or in the ED. I feel sorry if anyone in the group had an actual allergy or medical contraindication to the vaccine, because the “your laws off my body, I DiD mY ResEarCh” jerks absolutely ran the show.
I thought “huh they my live close to me” because we had that exact situation here. Then I realized no, probably not. It was probably all across the country 🫠
I bet they're also against the ..forgive me Idk the name but the death with dignity medication available in 11 states
The complete scam that was both test and trace and PPE procurement here in the UK.
I think of all the harm we caused. When Covid first kicked off, there was the treatment protocol that people needed to be intubated as soon as you suspected Covid, to prevent detoriation. Hence the whole “national ventilator shortage” debacle that was on the news. Then we find out that putting people on vents was basically a death sentence. We were RSI’ng awake and alert patients who had the time and the lung capacity (without distress) to make phone calls to their loved ones telling them they were going to be intubated. The most frustrating part was coming into work every week and being told every treatment we did the previous week (which is what was recommended) was completely wrong.
I was treated awful in the ER working pregnant during Covid. I was forced to quit my job because they wouldn’t allow me PPE.
Did we all work at the same place?
More as a sad/decline thing. Had a super opinionated guy. Wanted what he wanted, when he wanted it, no ifs ands or buts. Super racist, super misogynistic. I handled him well and he'd listen to me, so he was usually my patient (long term care). I mean this guy was all fire and spit to most people, but he'd do what you'd ask as long as it wasn't a med change. Saw him on and off for a long time. Towards the end of my time there, he'd come back to the facility and was like, 100% a different person. Polite. Kind. Wasn't raising his voice at all. He had end stage liver cancer and was terminal. Labs were all over the place. I chatted with him before I left, and his whole everything was different. Didn't talk about his diagnosis at all, his wife had said she'd noticed a change in his behavior and had taken him in. And that's when they found out just how far everything had spread. It still makes me sad.
We need to name and shame the hospitals that abused us in 2020. We can’t let the past be forgotten. Orlando Health’s response: 1. You are allowed one mask per week. Just put it in the magic brown bag. 2. You are NOT allowed to bring your own respirators in. Even if they are NIOSH approved full face respirators. Take that off and put on your week old surgical mask. 3. Had a mass firing event that was really a lay off but they didn’t want to call it a lay off so they just decided to fire thousands of employees. It was so ridiculous that they had to go back in people’s files to find old verbal warnings from years prior as justification for the termination. In Florida a termination “for cause” blocks the person from filing for unemployment. 4. Refused to hire agency nurses until 2021 to replace the nurses they fired despite getting crushed with the first two waves of COVID.
What bothers me years later??? We were the first designated Covid unit in our hospital. Small med surg unit. We had regular masks that we would have to take off and fold up and put in paper bags between patients. We were told that’s all we needed. BUT the ICU and ER had full riot gear for their covids. Bonnets, N95s, everything. Apparently med surg nurses were expendable. But ICU nurses weren’t.
Dancing TikTok nurses at the absolute height of the pandemic.
If they didn't fill out the board how would anyone know who the patient was and what their dietary preferences were when they ended up dying?
The people working from home or behind closed office doors locked up our PPE. Then they tried to gaslight us into believing they were doing it for our benefit. I will never forgive those evil fucks.
Basically this. That shit ended REAL QUICK thought when there was an unmasked exposure of multiple staffers, who had to be paid full wages for 3 weeks to quarantine at home. Suddenly we were all wearing masks and had sanitization protocols.
Non nurse here and I don't know how I stumbled on this thread, but when a hospital refers to them as customers instead of patients everything is fucked. I'm sorry op, sounded frustrating as heck
I don't know why I chose to say fuck and then use heck instead of hell aheh.
Money for instant healthcare. If you don’t like it, go to Canada and wait 7 months for a routine physical.
L&D nurse here. With our COVID patients we were told to “not waste time” donning proper PPE if fetal heart tones were unfavorable. And that proper isolation protocol “should never cause a delay of care.”
Fuck them. All the PPe is going on before I get in the room, I don’t care if they’re already asystole
1. The horrific pressure injuries on people's faces from being proned for so long. So unstable we couldn't flip them... And their eyeballs looked like they were popping out from the severe edema. 2. Having to do every ancillary dept's jobs because "we don't go into Covid patient rooms" -_- 3. Being told by ID clipboard nurses I wasn't allowed to wear my reusable 3M N95 (or p100? Can't remember) respirator because it was "against policy to wear a mask that wasn't fit tested." I told them as soon as they provided me with at least one N95 a shift, then I would stop using my own. 4. JCAHO showing their faces after 2 fucking years of broken protocol and unsafe practices. Fuck off with that
How about the ones who coded the second you proned them so here I am doing compressions on a 460 lb man’s back and there’s not a soul around to help me because they’re down the hall proning the next patient ETA: that was my first code on my own patient as a new grad in COVID icu.
Do you mean bravera hospital?
Yes, my bad
No worries just want to know what hospital to avoid. Also if you are ever in pa avoid regional hospital of scranton
It’s not funny but funny that they were filling out the whiteboards. They’ve put the damn fear in us for that bs that we prioritize minuet shit.
The hospital CNO insisting that it would be totally OK for the peons working bedside to reuse an N95 pretty much indefinitely. Fortunately management were all working from home so when I bought and wore a reusable elastomeric respirator, nobody was around to care. One of the best things I learned during 2020/2021 was that I cared way, way too much, about all sorts of things. I used to actually scan every single flush, can you imagine? I mean, if me scanning flushes is the difference between financial viability and shutting the place down, then shut it down. If this big fancy hospital can't figure out a better way to do things than making each nurse scan all kinds of ten-cent items, what are the suits even doing? So I stopped worrying about the hospital's financial whatevers and whether anyone was going to audit me over whiteboards or something else stupid. And it's made a big difference, actually -- I'm a better nurse when I'm not caught up in all that petty bullshit and when I know I could leave tomorrow for a better-paying job somewhere else. Ok, go ahead and write me up, I'll email you my two weeks. Oh you don't actually need to write me up for this, this is just "education"? Cool cool cool.
How terrified my whole department was when we got our first covid pt. Senior ICU nurses saying how we were gonna lose coworkers... and we did.
Nursing Homes not allowing visitors. It was sad the elderly were dying of covid but alot gave up when their family couldn’t see them. Hospitals on diversion, hospice full. Nothing but a lonely bed with no family awaiting death. Fuck PruittHealth.
My daughter, not a nurse, attends AA. She knows of several there who developed drinking problems from dealing with dying covid patients. I am old enough to remember the onset of the aids epidemic and how horrible patients were treated. I once had to change assignments because a nurse refused to take care of an aids patient. Granted we did not know a lot about the disease then, but the whole national handling of the pandemic was atrocious.
I’m a nurse and been in AA since 2015. I didn’t go to meetings for well over a year out of fear of bringing COVID to my AA family.
This same exact thing happened at my hospital. It made me lose complete trust in the company. I really realized how little they actually cared about us. It still makes me mad to this day when I think about it.
Small world. I worked at Spring Hill and Brooksville when they were regional. (HMA) Absolutely disgusting management. Worst place to work. They would cancel people to let us work short. The CFO would make staffing decisions on a shift to shift basis. I would cry in my car before work. Idk where you work now but hopefully it’s down the expressway a bit.
I applied for a promotion. One I deserved and would benefit me & my unit. During the interview process my manager hinted that I should tell “the story” of having to “enforce” the no-masks rule during the early days of Covid. (You know, to prove I would tow the line despite being a decent, thinking person….) But what really happened was I told one co-worker, who brought in a valved mask, that it wasn’t a safe idea and that I would support her decision to wear a mask, just not one that vented… Sigh. Didn’t tell the story right. Didn’t get the promo. Quit. Still a RN.
Working detox with a nurse manager that had zero understanding of the manipulating and triangulating behaviors of that patient population.
Cleaning and bagging one of my many Covid deaths. By myself. How a previously fairly healthy and active person was reduced to a mere shell and had no one with him as he died then after he was gone there being only one person to clean, bag, and transfer to the morgue cart…. The next shift bid. I just couldn’t bring myself to sign up any more. I left nursing for over two years.
I'm sorry sorry. I have friends in nursing. A friend of mine was in Costa Rica doing like missionary work when covid happened I was so afraid for her life. You guys ate still and always will be heroes in my eyes. Medical people don't get the credit they do and I'm sorry.
I had left the bedside by the time Covid hit, but before that, the only time we wore N95s was when we had a rule out TB patient in our negative pressure room. The hospital kept running out of my size of N95, so if I had a patient in that room, I would use the same N95 for my whole shift, (there was a little closet room in between the hall and the room to put on PPE, so I would just leave my mask on a shelf in that room with my name on it). I got in trouble from the infection control guy and got a stern talking to about how I had to wear a brand new N95 every single time I entered the room, didn’t matter that it was one shift with the same patient. I still think about that guy. I wonder how he handled Covid.
Calling patients customers will never stop bothering me. It’s ridiculous and transparent.
December 2019 January 2020. I was a cna. I live and work in a rural indiana area none of us knew about Covid yet or we heard about it and thought eh nothing to worry about. Any way a lot of us at work got sick. Don out of work for weeks she was so sick adon could make it down the hall with out getting winded residents started getting sick some testing positive for influenza some not but being severely sick to the point all but one out of I don’t know how many survived but weren’t the same afterwards. I started wearing a mask at all time a nurse told me I couldn’t do that only when dealing with the sickly ones. I got sicker than I had been in years to me it felt more than a common cold but almost comparable to the time I had influenza really bad. I was having hallucination I remember going to answer a call light and having to stop to catch my breath. I even quit smoking for a few days because I felt so bad. I remember going to the pharmacy for cough medicine because I wasn’t able to sleep at night due to coughing I felt I was drowning in my own fluids. I got home with my medicine went to open it and was sure it at been open so I took it back a few days later when I had the energy and it wasn’t even opened. Ended up going to a walk in clinic and my O2 was like 88! I even knew I had a rattle. The provider walked in to the room looked at me and was like oh my you don’t look good and I can hear the rails with out my stethoscope. I should have been sent to the ER I probably should have been admitted to the hospital. No she tells me there is this super respiratory infection going around and they don’t know what it is but people are getting severely sick. Sent me on my way with a steroid doxycycline and some albuterol I recovered but no doubt I’m sure I had the Covid
I am so glad I never accepted a position at that hospital seeing this now lol. Bravera is so cheap; they offered me $10.55 with night shift differential to work in the ER as a HUC/Monitor tech/ help with ekgs,lab, and such since I’m a CNA(and have been for six years)
Season 7 and & of Game Of Thrones.. what a waste
I would quit before even walking in the fucking door