WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs had a problem: Some of its workers appeared to be taking home extra masks and other protective gear, most likely fearing that they might not have enough supplies to do their jobs. So the department decided it would start checking everyone’s bags before they left for the day, and officials drafted a memo to explain the new policy.
But White House officials, not wishing to draw attention to shortages of protective gear at the V.A., the nation’s largest health care system, balked at the memo’s language, which was ultimately rescinded, officials said.
Since the moment the coronavirus arrived in the United States, doctors, nurses and other medical workers have been faced with a dangerous shortage of masks and other protective gear.
In response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention loosened many of its health care safety guidelines, permitting the frequent reuse of masks. These amended guidelines have raised alarms during internal meetings for health care experts within the Department of Veterans Affairs, and have caused fear and anger among workers.
Department officials have repeatedly denied that workers across their health care system — which serves nine million veterans and has 390,000 employees — have inadequate gear, even as complaints against the department have been rising.
Over all, at least 1,604 workers have become sick with the coronavirus, and 14 have died. The department until recently had been recommending that health care workers who tested positive for the virus return to work if they did not have symptoms, the opposite of advice the federal government has given the rest of the nation. (The department now says people who are under investigation for possibly having the virus may come to work, not those tested positive.)
In recent weeks, hundreds of workers have called in sick, stretching the department’s work force even as it commits to making 1,500 beds available for use by nonveterans, hospital workers say, though department officials say they have been able to manage the labor force well. This could exacerbate a staffing problem that has drawn the attention of its inspector general.
Guidance concerning the virus that is sent to the department’s 170 hospital centers now has to be cleared by the White House, which sometimes slows communications, according to officials.
“Everyone is extremely anxious,” said Jason Gearhart, a nursing assistant at the Pittsburgh V.A. Medical Center. “People keep using the same mask they have had forever.”
He noted that, like workers in many health care centers, those in veterans’ facilities are using their N95 masks for days at a time, storing them in paper bags when they are not working. “They say they are working on refurbishing them,” Mr. Gearhart said.
Workers have no access to coronavirus tests and are not called when a colleague becomes sick to try to ascertain if they have been exposed, he said. “It feels like our lives and our families lives and veterans lives don’t matter here,” Mr. Gearhart added.
John Mechanic, a union representative in Mississippi, received masks from a friend who has a lawn care business, and he delivered them to a V.A. community clinic in Mobile, Ala., where at least one worker had gotten sick after screening patients.
“We begged for P.P.E., and they said they didn’t have any to give us,” said Myoshi North, who worked at the front desk of the clinic, referring to personal protective equipment. She said that she was now ill.
In Georgia, a man was arrested last week for trying to defraud the Department of Veterans Affairs by offering to sell $750 million in nonexistent protective gear. In Oregon, a radiology technician filed a whistle-blower complaint after he said he was exposed to a patient that he was not told had the virus.
The hotline for the department’s inspector general has been receiving dozens of calls from health care workers complaining about a lack of protective gear, officials said.
“What the V.A. Administration is saying to the public about safety is, quite frankly, not true,” said Alma Lee, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees National Veterans Affairs Council, which represents 260,000 department employees. “Our members don’t have adequate P.P.E., appropriate leave policies, hazard pay or widespread telework. This has to change.”
Even administrative employees who work at department offices outside of its health care facilities have complained that they have often not been permitted to work from home. Dr. Richard Stone, who runs the department’s Veterans Health Administration, has told employees by phone that they need to go the extra mile for veterans.
“Currently, every health care system is taking steps to conserve P.P.E.,” said Christina Mandreucci, a spokeswoman for the Department of Veterans Affairs. “All V.A. facilities are equipped with essential items and supplies to handle coronavirus cases, and all V.A. employees have the appropriate personal protective equipment, as per C.D.C. guidelines.”
She said the department was “monitoring the supply levels at every facility every day to make sure facilities have adequate P.P.E. for the number and types of patients they are seeing.” As for staffing, Ms. Mandreucci said, “The vast majority of our facilities has been able to reallocate personnel to areas experiencing a surge in Covid-19 demands for care.”
Under the V.A.’s guidelines, employees treating coronavirus patients get one face mask a day, and N95 respirators are given as needed. But workers are encouraged to reuse them, Ms. Mandreucci said.
Numerous health care workers said they were instructed to keep their masks in a paper bag to reuse the next day. One official at the department noted in a meeting that the situation with masks seemed “dire” and that they feared there would not be proper filtration with old masks.
"care" - Google News
April 16, 2020 at 04:45PM
https://ift.tt/2Vug7so
V.A. Health Care Workers Balk at Safety Practices - The New York Times
"care" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2N6arSB
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "V.A. Health Care Workers Balk at Safety Practices - The New York Times"
Post a Comment