‘We are scared.’ Nurses say Blake isn’t doing enough to protect staff and patients

Nurses at Blake Medical Center say hospital officials are not properly protecting staff and patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During a protest Thursday morning, nurses say there is a complete lack of transparency and communication from hospital administrators and often, they are kept out of the loop when it comes to patients who are COVID-19 positive or awaiting test results.

“The nurses have no idea which ones are positive and which ones are negative and they are treating them separately,” said Victoria Holland who has been at Blake for two years as a nurse.

Holland recently raised safety concerns and was suspended for her efforts.

“We are being told it’s a HIPPA violation even though we are taking care of the patients,” Holland said. “That’s one of our biggest problems. We have to protect ourselves as well and be careful not to spread it among the patients.”

The protest was one of several carried out at HCA-hospital across the country.

A Blake spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

‘Czars’ dictate who gets a mask, nurse says

Holland said nurses and staff have to go to “czars who go around and dictate who get masks and who doesn’t. They don’t have masks readily available to us. We have to call the czar, which is part of the reason I’m on suspension.”

Holland said she was told to wear a N95 mask while responding to an emergency, but she didn’t have access to one from the hospital. She had her own so she put it on and went into the room. Afterwards, she asked that it be cleaned or replaced and was told no.

“Instead, I was scolded for wearing it and told this was a N95 patient, even though two physicians told me to wear the mask,” she said. “So I was stern in asking to have my mask replaced due to the fact that this was a probable case and I was denied and told I had an attitude and asked to go home.”

Nurses complained about the lack of protective gear in an environment where they aren’t even being told who may be COVID-19 positive. The hospital has since told all staff to wear masks, but they are surgical masks, which nurses say do not protect them from the coronavirus.

Candice Cordero has been a nurse at Blake for 19 years. She said the fact that she and other nurses were outside protesting and talking to the media says it all.

“The only time you will see nurses outside of the hospital talking to the news is when we have some issues we are super concerned about,” Cordero said. “They really need to be in negative pressure rooms and treated like they are positive up until we get a negative result.”

Cordero said that is not happening and test results are still taking between five and seven days.

“The hospital keeps claiming we have no positives, but we have a lot of patients on isolation right now that are being tested and it’s still pending,” she said. “Staff just wants to make sure that we are safe and not passing it around to any staff and to other patients and that these patients are being housed separately so there’s no risk.”

‘There’s no transparency’

Holland said the truth is, nurses have no idea how many possible COVID-19 patients there are.

“They don’t tell us,” Holland said. “There’s no transparency even if it’s a patient we feel qualifies for testing, there is no education or communication with the staff as a reason to why. Sometimes we have two different doctors with two different opinions. One wants to test the patient and the other doesn’t.”

Holland said the hospital is receiving patients from other hospitals where the patient’s original doctor wants testing, but hospital administration declines to do it.

Not everyone agrees with those protesting. A nurse who asked not to be named to avoid offending her coworkers doesn’t believe she’s been put in an unsafe environment.

“We have all the PPE required and we’ve never been told to go into a room without a mask,” she said. “Blake is following all of the recommendations set forth by the CDC. They even informed us today that we could wear homemade masks, which I do not agree with.”

The nurse said her coworkers are protesting isolated incidents. While she agrees HCA does have many issues in regards to what’s best for employees, she doesn’t believe its the case this time. She said she doesn’t believe everyone in the hospital should be required to wear masks and that action could result in a shortage.

Cordero said a nurse saying everyone shouldn’t be required to wear a mask “Is a shocking statement. It’s kind of like the calm before the storm inside the hospital right now.”

Kim Brooks has been a nurse for 35 year, including 14 years with Blake. She’s also currently suspended because she wore her own N95 mask and refused to take it off when she was told to remove it.

“I’m out here for the patients and for the nurses’ safety,” Brooks said. “We feel like the hospital has let us down as far as safety standards. They’ve had lots of time. They knew about this pandemic in January. They’ve had lots of time to prepare to get ample supplies and I feel like they’ve let us down.”

Union demands answers on supplies

Brooks said the nurses’ union filed a grievance over a week ago to get the hospital to tell them how many supplies are available.

“We’ve not heard anything back,” she said. “I’m disappointed that I was just trying to protect myself and was told to go home because I would not remove my mask. Research has shown this is an airborne disease and stays in the air for three hours. We need N95s for every single staff member in this hospital to protect ourselves, our patients and our community.”

Cordero said communication between the administration and staff has gotten much worse during the pandemic.

“We are in the dark and we’re scared,” she said. “We are wondering if this patient going through the hallway is a COVID. Am I walking through an airborne cloud as this patient is going down the hallway? None of us know.”

Brooks said she is in constant communication with other nurses.

“They’re terrified. They’re scared. They see the death tolls going up. Younger and younger people are getting sick and we don’t want to be a part of the statistics and we don’t want to pass it on to somebody else for them to be part of the statistics.”

Brooks said the nurses just want the hospital to be proactive now and not wait until it’s too late. All of the nurses said Blake Medical Center is not prepared for a potential surge in cases.

“There’s no excuse,” Holland said. “This is a company who made $23 billion in profits last year. “They’ve known about this before we knew about it. They had plenty of time to prepare. There’s no excuse. The H1N1 should have been a reason for everybody to get it together and the fact that hospitals don’t have their employees’ best interests at heart is very concerning.”

HCA nurses across the country echo the concern.

Jean Ross, RN, president of the National Nurses United which organized the protest at Blake, said,“They are told to unsafely reuse masks and at one hospital they are even being told not to wear masks because it scared the patients.”

A survey of HCA nurses showed only 35 percent report having access to N95 masks and only 7 percent report having enough PPE to protect staff and patients.

“We are facing the gravest public health crisis in a century,” said Gary Mousseau, a nurse at Fawcett Memorial Hospital in Port Charlotte. “As nurses at HCA health care facilities across the country, it has been disheartening to see HCA’s poor response to our safety concerns.