National Nurses United

"We can't even say that they failed to protect public health, because that would imply that they tried," said Bonnie Castillo, RN and executive director of National Nurses United as well as CNA and NNOC. "On every level, they disregarded the health and safety of nurses and of patients. They treat us as if we are expendable. But if nurses aren't protected, patients aren't protected." One thing that will never change is nurses' spirit to fight for the health and well-being of their patients and their communities. So despite the personal health risks, despite the discomfort and even skin damage caused by wearing an N95 respirator, face shield, gown, gloves, bonnet, and booties for hours and hours and hours on end, despite the social isolation that many nurses are voluntarily subjecting themselves to in order to avoid exposing their loved ones, nurses are not only still caring for their patients, but taking on that second-shift work of activism with their union to provide the leadership desperately needed to protect all nurses and health care workers across the entire country during COVID-19. NNU has also stepped in to fill a void in data collection, research, and tracking, including conducting two nationwide surveys of nurses about working conditions and recording nurse and health care workers' deaths. "Going in, I knew how valuable the union was, but with all this COVID stuff, it really was the union's voice that was trying to keep us safe while everybody else was willing to compromise and just leave us nurses to fend for ourselves," said Deborah Burger, RN and a president of NNU and CNA/NNOC. "I've talked to nurses in other states who don't have that same level of protection and they rely on us. Everyone's relying on us." * * * * from the beginning, NNU has been demanding of everybody and anybody who would listen: Follow the precautionary principle with COVID-19. This was such a novel, little-understood virus that we knew, as an organization, that it was better to be safe than sorry. The precautionary principle is common in many fields and certainly not new to nursing and health care. Our employers needed to, and government needed to direct them to, take the highest level of precautions and provide the highest level of protections up front, even before we knew for certain whether something was harmful or not. It's always possible to remove layers of precaution, but impossible to add them after the fact. With COVID-19, that essentially meant taking airborne, droplet, and contact precautions against the virus. N95 respirators, along with face shields or goggles, hair bonnets, shoe covers, impermeable gowns, and gloves were the minimum needed, but NNU has always recommended the higher standard of powered air-purifying respirators and head-to-toe coveralls. "Not following the precautionary principle is like leaving the gate open and letting all the goats run away and then you say, 'Oops! Better close the gate now!'" joked Kathy Dennis, a Sacramento RN and a CNA/NNOC board member. "All the damage has already been done." To that end, NNU began monitoring the virus in January and then wrote to almost every global and federal health and workplace safety agency and leader to adopt the highest standards and protections against COVID-19, including the World Health Organization (WHO); the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); every member of Congress; and the executive branch officials, Vice President Mike Pence and Dr. Deborah Birx, in charge of the nation's COVID-19 response. NNU also petitioned Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia and federal OSHA on March 4 to adopt an emergency temporary standard on infectious diseases for health care workers because, amazingly, no such enforceable standard existed nationally. California enjoys the highest standard in the country, with its Cal-OSHA aerosol A P R I L | M AY | J U N E 2 0 2 0 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 11

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