# 3488
PPE stands for personal protective equipment, and it consists of things like latex or vinyl gloves, gowns, eye protection and facemasks and respirators.
These barriers are essential equipment anytime a HCW (Health Care Worker) is in direct contact with a potentially infected patient.
Since a complaint has been filed, and we only have what has been reported here to go on, I’ll refrain from commenting directly on this case.
First this report, then some general comments.
Vallejo hospital nurses claim lack of proper swine flu gear
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
11:15 a.m.VALLEJO — Nurses at a northern California hospital say inadequate masks and air-filters have resulted in medical staffers becoming ill while caring for three swine flu patients.
A complaint filed Tuesday with the state details the allegations against Sutter Solano Medical Center in Vallejo, about 30 miles north of San Francisco.
Nurse Sherry Ramsey says 10 nurses have respiratory illnesses that developed after they treated patients with swine flu.
The complaint, filed with the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, also alleges the hospital failed to provide nurses with the fitted, duck bill-shaped masks used for treating patients who have an airborne illness.
A spokesperson for the hospital did not return a phone message Tuesday.
It is incumbent upon every employer to provide a safe workplace for their employees, and that is all the more true in the health care setting.
OSHA has provided much guidance over the past couple of years for general workplaces, and for health care settings. Health Care Workers are considered to be atop the risk pyramid, as depicted below.
Occupational Risk Pyramid for Pandemic Influenza
Very High Exposure Risk:
- Healthcare employees (for example, doctors, nurses, paramedics, or dentists) performing aerosol-generating procedures on known or suspected pandemic patients (for example, cough induction procedures, tracheal intubations, bronchoscopies, some dental procedures, or invasive specimen collection).
- Healthcare or laboratory personnel collecting respiratory tract specimens from known or suspected pandemic patients.
High Exposure Risk:
- Healthcare delivery and support staff exposed to known or suspected pandemic patients (for example, doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff that must enter patients' rooms).
- Staff transporting known or suspected pandemic patients (for example, emergency medical technicians).
- Staff performing autopsies on known or suspected pandemic patients.
Well over a year ago OSHA released estimates on the numbers of PPEs that health care workers would need during a pandemic wave. The chart below shows that nurses in direct contact with patients would be expected to need nearly 500 masks over a 12 week period.
OSHA has also released guidance for the protection of workers in a health care setting:
Whatever the particulars of this case, health care workers deserve to be protected.
There should be no expectation that HCWs work without proper protective equipment - endangering their lives, the lives of their families, and the lives of other patients and coworkers - simply because their facility chose not to provide them with proper PPE.
It would be hard for any facility to argue, at this late date, and after all of the HHS, CDC, and OSHA guidance over the past 3 years that no one ever mentioned the possibility of needing these supplies.
At least, I’d hate to try to make that argument.
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