Without protective equipment, nurses and doctors are at risk
As I sit self-isolated, waiting to return to work as a registered nurse in the intensive care unit of a New Mexico hospital, I am terrified.
Not at the prospect of caring for patients with COVID-19. No, I am frightened because across the country, the personal protective equipment that keeps health care workers safe are being rapidly depleted to dangerously low levels. A friend and physician in San Francisco I spoke with this week is making her own masks using furnace filters. In Seattle, workers are limited to one mask a day.
Across the country, volunteers are sewing masks the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states have an “unknown” level of protection to fill the gap. Yesterday, a coworker texted me, “I’m trying not to be too anxious, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about what will happen if I die because of this.” She is a mother of two.
As front-line staff, our fear is infused with anger at the tragic fact that this supply crisis was preventable. The supply of the particle-filtering N95 masks in the National Strategic Stockpile — the government’s cache of supplies to be utilized in emergencies like the one we find ourselves facing — was never significantly replenished after 85 million such masks were distributed to combat H1N1 in 2009. At present, the stockpile has 12 million of these masks — a paltry sum compared to the estimated 3.5 billion masks needed in a severe pandemic.
Misallocation further exacerbates the shortage. Target stores were selling these lifesaving masks to consumers in Seattle as recently as March 20 — the same day Seattle hospitals were instructing staff to wash masks with bleach between patients. The CDC now recommends the use of bandannas when masks are not available. To the country’s leaders who got us here, I ask you: Would you in good conscience care for someone with COVID-19 with nothing but a bandanna to protect yourself and return home to your families?
This is what you are asking of us: to risk our lives and those of the ones we love because you failed to prepare for something entirely predictable.
Already hospitals like mine are changing safety policies and protocols to ration PPE; many of us no longer feel safe while we care for New Mexicans fighting this virus. As health care workers, we are left feeling even more disposable than the masks used to protect us.
To my fellow New Mexicans, I implore you: Please help us. While damage has been done, it is not too late to ameliorate this crisis. Contact your representatives and demand the Defense Production Act — an act allowing the president to mandate businesses make supplies necessary for national defense — be utilized to expedite the production of protective equipment. Ask the governor and your state representatives that all out-of-pocket health care costs be covered should we contract COVID-19 in the course of jobs, as has been promised in New Mexico. Ask for help. Please, be there for us so we can be there for you.
To the leaders who so frequently express their thanks for the work we do — save it. Your failures left us in the untenable position of choosing between abandoning our patients and risking the lives of ourselves and our loved ones. So while you lay in bed as this virus sinks its teeth further into our communities, remember this as you fall asleep: Tens of thousands of doctors, nurses and patients will needlessly die in the coming weeks — and their blood is on your hands.
Hunter Marshall is a registered nurse in an intensive care unit in New Mexico.
Already hospitals like mine are changing safety policies and protocols to ration PPE; many of us no longer feel safe while we care for New Mexicans fighting this virus. As health care workers, we are left feeling even more disposable than the masks used to protect us.