^^ I’d say - unbelievable - but clearly it’s not.
Sigh.
Nephew’s wife is a pregnant physician. I wonder if she’s having the same issues. How awful.
D1 says she understands why they don’t want her to come to the office, but still this is a first (and high risk) pregnancy and she needs pre-natal care.
She’s trying to negotiate a compromise where she and an OB attending will meet at her hospital where they’ll use an empty patient exam room for her physical & ultrasound. The attending will do the blood draw too.
I hope they work something out because otherwise that’s a pretty terrible state of affairs.
Good God, as if they aren’t going through enough Hell as it is.
When people are fearful, it’s not pretty.
Especially when the threat is invisible, so they apply the fear and hate against a proxy target.
OK just finished a long conversation with D1.
She said it’s not just her having difficulty finding an OB. Her hospital has seen a number of seen a number of healthy pregnant women coming complaining of abdominal pain and spotting–even when they aren’t having those symptoms–in order to get an ultrasound.
She also said she is seeing the same thing observed by the Yale cardiologist in this NY Times editorial–
[Where Have All the Heart Attacks Gone?](Where Have All the Heart Attacks Gone? - The New York Times)
She hasn’t had single heart attack/angina/severe chest pain patient in 2 weeks, but her ED is getting 3-4 non-revivable cardiac arrests coming in each shift. Now some may be Covid related, but surely not all of them. There have been no slip-and-fall injuries, no appendicitis cases, no back injuries, no miscarriages/hemorrhages and only 1 stroke.
My relative is a podiatrist. She just got an ultrasound and found out she’s expecting a boy! She has tried to only do telehealth and stay away from med centers. She hasn’t mentioned any stigma in the Bay Area.
Bad thing is neither she nor pathologist spouse can get reimbursed for any work done at home. :-(. They are still trying to work from home as much as possible to keep in utero baby and expectant mom as healthy as possible.
In HI, they’ve started hotels for heroes program with 33 hotels. The state will pay for hotel rooms @$85/nite. So far Over 5000 have signed up so they can keep loved ones from getting their germs.
There is a Hilton Garden Inn attached by a bridge to our biggest hospital and they are giving rooms to medical workers for free. I’m sure other hotels are doing the same. They pretty much all have most of there rooms available right now.
Would less of the following matter?
- General activity.
- Riding and driving in cars.
- Injury-prone sports.
- Physically unfit people doing bursts of high exertion.
- Eating sugary/fatty restaurant food.
A person we know passed away from a heart attack on Saturday. It was in his sleep. It’s the former spouse of a relative so there’s no way of knowing if he had been feeling symptoms and ignored them or not.
I totally have compassion for any health care workers getting attacked. However, they 100% shouldn’t be out in public wearing their scrubs - not if they are going into work, not if they have left work.
I have a pregnant relative who’s a doctor and I gather from other relatives that she is no longer working. She struggled to get pregnant and I believe she’s over 40. She also has a young child. Her husband is also a medical professional, but I don’t know what he’s doing.
ETA - I have no idea whether she quit or took a leave of absence or what. She may have been advised by her doc to do this.
I know people who work in home health care and this is not an option. Or dental professionals who might not want to change in a bathroom stall when they get into work.
I agree that people should not be going out in public after work in scrubs pandemic or not. I think people need to understand that the general public is sensitive and if they have to be out in public in scrubs before work that they will be judged extra harshly right now and to avoid if at all possible. Still not okay to be physically assaulted because of it. Lets not victim shame here.
Not shaming anyone if you thought I was. Any health care entity should have protocol in place for items worn into or out of the health care location and options for changing into or out of those exposed items.
This next comment is not related to the post above - just a comment for the thread:
The health system I work for is now offering food/pantry item pick up from the hospital cafeteria. Health care staff can complete a form and pick up a variety of grocery items at reasonable cost from the in-house cafeteria including meat, dairy, produce, staples, etc. Very helpful.
@abasket I agree with should have options for changing but many rational reasons why it isnt practical for some.
Personally, I like to go home and shower right away after work (even pre pandemic). IF I have plans (pre pandemic) after work I will bring extra clothes and change in a bathroom. But theres also plenty of times as a parent I get the “oh I need xyz” and Im stuck stopping somewhere quick after work to fetch said items for someone in the household.
Of course now with the pandemic I am thinking ahead and planning more and of course not stopping anywhere after work. My one job is actually providing scrubs for us to wear and leave there for them to launder for the first time ever (I work in ED/trauma).
I get the scare now but for the most part, most healthcare workers pre pandemic werent “more dirty” than a huge portion of the general population out in public anyways. Ive encountered way too many people in public who likely had bedbugs or were hacking and coughing over everything. I know at work Im at least taking precautions and still probably cleaner than them.
Seems like availability would be better there than in grocery stores, because the hospital cafeteria is sourcing from the commercial supply chain rather than the household supply chain that is still having shortages of some items.
Here in the Seattle area we might be around the peak and, at least so far, it hasn’t been too unmanageable. Shutting down early seems to have helped. Schools were shut March 12 and elective surgeries were cancelled on March 18. New admissions and deaths+discharges have evened out at most hospitals with a few ventilators to spare. They started taking down the emergency overflow hospitals.
W is an NP in primary care who works for a hospital organization. She started seeing patients with flu-like symptoms who tested negative for the flu in the beginning of February. Her clinic termed it “the sore throat virus.” Two guys at my work were hacking and coughing the 3rd week of February, one of whom lives with a woman who is a nurse at Life Care of Kirkland. It wasn’t until Feb 29 when W realized that it was probably coronavirus all around us.
Part of being the first hotspot was that our hospitals quickly sucked up the available national supply of N95 masks. That left everyone not at a hospital without masks and other PPE by the 3rd week of March. W has been using surgical masks and has 1 N95 she keeps in a bag. We had 6 N95s at our house and she got a donation from a neighbor of two more N95s plus about 50 surgical masks that she drove to a friends clinic in Renton so they could keep practicing.
Our hospitals have been doing like what you hear from other places. Reusing masks and other PPE. They have also started furloughing the OR nurses and NAs, plus others who are not in the ER or ICU areas. Hospitals are losing millions each week. Medicare reimbursement rates are not enough to keep the doors open.
Hospital workers in the Covid areas continue to get sick. Most are at home, some are working through it, but one of her MD friends was on ECMO last we heard. They have started to pull in volunteers from other areas including two providers from her clinic with more recent hospital experience. W was an ICU nurse but 25 years ago so will keep covering primary care.
Interesting JAMA editorial
[A Bold Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Medical Students, National Service, and Public Health](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2764427?guestAccessKey=1cebf1d5-ef78-4d80-b813-fc06febd744f&utm_source=fbpage&utm_medium=social_jama&utm_term=3257129099&utm_campaign=article_alert&linkId=86089167&fbclid=IwAR3hOHTV90S-g1yaWGveqRw6FjT-XiIqQUrpj0UzHOvZ1YDb7br47C31_Hc)
The author proposes national mandatory public health service for all current and in-coming medical students. Students will deployed to state and local public health service to assist in community surveillance, to help protect high risk populations by working in nursing homes & prisons, and to staff community covid-19 call centers.
Montefiore (big hospital system in NYC area) is giving out free meals at their cafeterias.
D1 reports also reports her hospital system is losing $$ because elective procedures have been postponed and the care of coronavirus patients is so expensive.
She is no longer being paid overtime at her hospital. Since she is technically a salaried staffer, she is being told she must work over-time with no extra compensation. D1 is looking for a job in CA (her husband’s job is located in CA), but cannot find a permanent full time position because none of the LA area hospitals are hiring. She did contact the CA Dept of Health site that was recruiting physicians and other HCW, but even though the state says it’s hiring physicians with licenses from any state, if you don’t currently hold a CA medical license they cannot actually hire you since you can’t prescribe for and can’t admit any patients to the hospital who qualify for medicare or medicaid.
In the meantime, she is getting increasingly desperate offers from the Henry Ford healthcare system in Detroit offering her over $4800 per 10 hour shift.
In Utah, any doctors at Intermountain Health who work in primarily elective fields (derm, ophthalmology, urology, orthopedics, neurology, etc) are having their reimbursement cut by up to 30% starting in July. Some departments are furloughing nurses and technicians.
https://www.newsweek.com/utah-medical-provider-pay-cuts-coronavirus-pandemic-1495247
https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/04/03/intermountain-healthcare/