Thread by @NationalNurses

WATCH LIVE: Pascaline Muhindura, RN brings her experience as a frontline nurse to the @EdLaborCmte Workforce Protections Subcommittee hearing "Clearing the Air: Science-Based Strategies to Protect Workers from #Covid19 Infections."

#ProtectNurses

NNU member Pascaline Muhindura, RN to the subcommittee:

1️⃣ My employer has failed to #ProtectNurses.
2️⃣ @CDCgov and @OSHA_DOL have also failed to protect us.
3️⃣ The CDC and OSHA must take 💥immediate💥 steps to ensure that nurses and other workers get the protections we need.

Muhindura continued:

For more than a year, I have been caring for patients in a #Covid unit in my hospital.

EVERY SINGLE NURSE & #HealthCareWorker in my unit contracted Covid because we were not given the protections we need.

My colleague Celia, lost her life.🕯️❤️

Because SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted through aerosol particles, nurses MUST be given respiratory protection.

At minimum, we need N95s, which are only safe for SINGLE USE.

Powered Air-Purifying Respirators and elastomeric respirators are more protective and are safely reusable.

January 2020 ➡️ RNs urged our employer to prepare for Covid. They didn’t.

March 2020 ➡️ Management had still not implemented our recommendations, or fit tested RNs for N95s.

March 21 ➡️ Management collected all the PPE in the hospital, locked it up, & began rationing N95s.

The next day, nurses identified a patient with Covid symptoms, and asked management for N95s.

Management refused.

The patient later tested positive, and as a result of her exposure to this patient, my colleague Celia Yap-Banago, contracted #Covid and lost her life.

Despite Celia’s death, management is still forcing us to unsafely reuse the same N95 for an entire shift.

Nurses on my unit are STILL caring for Covid patients without adequate respiratory protection.

This isn’t just happening in my hospital.

As union RNs, we fight these dangerous policies every step of the way.✊

We know, when our safety is compromised, our patients are also at risk.

Management justifies their negligence by saying they're following CDC guidelines.

But, @CDCgov guidelines are NOT based on science.

We also need a federal @OSHA_DOL standard that REQUIRES employers to protect our health and safety at work.

If these recommendations were implemented a year ago, my colleague Celia, along with thousands of other #HealthCareWorkers would be alive today.

We need @CDCgov to:

1️⃣ Update its Covid guidelines to be based on scientific evidence, especially regarding aerosol transmission.

2️⃣ Revoke the crisis standards on “optimization” of PPE, which are based on supply considerations not science.
act.medicare4all.org/signup/aerosol…

"Fortunately, I am part of National Nurses United, and most of the safety measures that have been implemented because of the advocacy we've been doing since last March."

Thank you to @RepJoeCourtney for bringing attention to another epidemic facing people working in the caring professions face: #WorkplaceViolence.

"We've seen an increase in anxiety in patients due to #Covid19," and nurses report an increase in violent incidents in the past year.