National Nurses United

better protection against airborne viruses and are intended to be cleaned and reused. "There is no scientific evidence that any decontamination method is both safe and effective," testified Bonnie Castillo, RN and executive director of NNU before federal lawmakers in June. "But the FDA pushed through emergency use authorization to bypass normal safety regulations and the Pentagon awarded a $415 million federal contract to Battelle to use nurses as guinea pigs on these untested systems." Nurses are having some success in pushing employers to switch to elastomerics. Veterans Health Administration nurses treating Covid and suspected Covid patients in the Bronx, New York started using elastomerics in April and in October, Kaiser Permanente nurses at three facilities in California began a pilot program using elastomerics, with plans to roll out elastomerics to all facilities in another five weeks. In the case of Kaiser, it was organizing and advo- cacy by nurses that pushed management to do a 180-degree turn and abandon the company's previous "5x7" plan to make nurses reuse five masks that they kept in brown paper bags for seven days between uses. In August, California nurses scored a tremendous victory when Cal/OSHA issued an interim guidance that effectively banned the reuse of N95 respirators (respirator cannot be used for more than one shift, but extended use during one shift is unfortunately still allowed) and also "decontaminated" N95s. Hospitals can still collect masks to process, but can only store them in the event of some future shortage. In addition, the California Legislature passed and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in September AB 2537, a California Nurses Association-spon- sored bill that requires hospitals to provide N95s and to keep a three-month inventory at typical usage rates of new, unexpired N95s and other PPE at all times. And in October, Cal/OSHA began citing and fining facilities for failing to treat Covid-19 as an airborne disease and issuing N95-or-better respirator protections for their workers. Crisis-condition short staffing—even worse than the normally bad levels—is also another common and rampant problem nurses experience. In July, with Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations surging in Florida, nurses at three HCA-owned hospitals there, St. Peters- burg General Hospital, Largo Medical Center, and Northside Hospital, staged a joint, socially distanced protest of the unsafe con- ditions. At Northside Hospital, some of the ER nurses reported having to care for as many as 16 patients at one time—an unaccept- able assignment. In addition to unsafe staffing, nurses objected to lack of PPE and being forced to reuse the same masks, improper comingling of Covid-positive, suspected, and negative patients, threats and retaliatory disciplinary actions against nurses who speak against the unsafe conditions, and failure to notify nurses and the union about RNs who were exposed to the virus. HCA is the largest and wealthiest hospital system in the United States, posting $1.1 billion in profits in the second quarter of 2020. On top of that, the chain received $1.4 billion from CARES Act funds as well as an additional $300 million since June 30. "Protecting our patients is our priority. But rushing from patient to patient because of inadequate staffing is a recipe for disaster which doesn't allow us to properly monitor our patients when they are at their most vulnerable," said Keosha Morris, a medical-surgical RN who works at Largo Medical Center. "It also increases the danger of mistakes, including the spread of virus to other patients." In fact, NNU filed a complaint with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in late August, citing 17 HCA facilities for a number of workplace safety hazards, including the three just mentioned. (See news section for more details.) In California, which is the only state in the nation to have hospi- tal-wide safe staffing ratio laws, hospitals tried to take advantage of the pandemic to circumvent the staffing regulations by quietly applying with the state for waivers. Nurses were so angered by their employers' sneaky tactics that they immediately protested in full force and, at many facilities, were successful in pressuring employers to withdraw their applications. (See article on page 20 for more information.) With such poor infection control practices, it's no surprise that hospitals have experienced Covid-19 outbreaks among health care workers and nurses. In May, some 69 nurses at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward, Calif. were exposed to the virus and at least 26 nurses ended up testing positive—but it was a battle with the hospital to even get them tested. Also in June, nurses working at UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Chicago rallied to protest a Covid infec- tion rate among nurses of 6 percent, which is almost triple the rate of J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 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 15

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