Nurses' Survey of Hospitals Shows Critical Gaps in Swine Flu Preparedness and Growing RN Infections

Preliminary findings of a nurses' survey of more than 75 hospitals in California, Illinois, Nevada, and Maine find disturbing gaps in hospital preparedness for responding to the H1N1 pandemic and a growing number of cases in which RNs and other healthcare workers have been infected, the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee announced today. 

These findings take on greater urgency following the death of a Sacramento nurse due to swine flu last week as well as a General Accounting Office report to Congress that warned the U.S. is still not adequately prepared for a worse outbreak of H1N1 this fall.

Among the early tentative findings from the approximately 75 hospitals:

• At least a third of the hospitals have had infected patients.
• Nurses or other healthcare workers in over 12 percent of the hospitals have been infected, including hospitals in Southern California, Northern California, Chicago, and the Sacramento hospital where 51-year-old Karen Ann Hays, a marathon runner in otherwise excellent health, died.
• Nurses in more than 10 percent of the hospitals do not have access to the recommended N-95 respirator masks. 
• In more than a quarter of the hospitals, nurses have been expected to re-use masks, which is highly risky.
• In 20 percent of the hospitals, nurses say proper infection control procedures are not being followed.
• More than a third of the hospitals have failed to properly explain swine flu policies to the RNs.

CNA/NNOC notes the RN exposures are of particular concern given the inconsistent reporting requirements and reports that hospital employers are not consistently tracking exposures or numbers infected. 

Hospitals have also been inconsistent about recommending whether people stay home or receive Tamiflu if they get exposed, and nurses who have raised concerns have in some cases been subject to retaliation, including a University of California San Francisco RN who was fired after she protested to management about inadequate hospital safety standards that she felt contributed to her swine flu infection.

Chanting “Not one more nurse, not one more patient,” more than a hundred RNs from across California protested UCSF’s retaliation, and the widespread gaps in influenza preparedness uncovered in the report. 

James Darby, an RN and chief nurse representative at UCSF addressed the crowd at the rally and noted, “If you complain, if you speak out, if you speak up about adequate materials that we need to take care of patients, if you speak up about more staffing to take care of patients, UC’s message is that they will retaliate. My message to UC is that you may retaliate, but the nurses will not stop advocating for our patients.”

Deborah Burger, an RN in Santa Rosa, California and co-President of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee added, “[Patients] are trusting us and the hospital to take care of them, and it’s not being done. And this is not even the flu season yet.”