OC Nurses Unite In Protest: Workers And Patients Need Protection

ORANGE COUNTY, CA — Registered nurses who belong to National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association demanded greater protections for healthcare providers and patients. Over 200 protests across the nation would speak to their plight mirrored by Southern California health care workers.

The nurses say they are advocating for their patients at all levels. Inside hospital walls, nurses want employers to protect nurses, other healthcare workers, and patients by following proper infection control practices, which include providing optimal personal protective equipment and a safe workload of patients, according to the unions.

An Anaheim area community hospital recently experienced 16 of the 22 R.N.s who tested positive for COVID-19. Each infected nurse is from low-risk units, a union statement says, such as telemetry and med/surgical.

Carolyn Stoddard, a nurse from West Anaheim Medical Center, discussed the travesty taking place in her profession amid a global pandemic.

"For the nurses who work three to five 12-hour shifts weekly, the need for full protection with proper PPE would certainly mitigate the constant exposure they face," Stoddard says. "Showing up to work to care for patients should not be a COVID-19 exposure roll of the dice for nurses, while employers and the government fail to take all measures to ensure the demand for PPE is met."

In Orange County, rallies were scheduled to take place outside Anaheim Global Medical Center on South Anaheim Boulevard; Chapman Global Medical Center on East Chapman Avenue in Orange; South Coast Global Medical Center on South Bristol Street in Santa Ana; West Anaheim Medical Center on West Orange Avenue; and Kindred Hospital Westminster on Hospital Circle.

As they protest outside of hospitals across Orange County and the nation, nurses hope to express to Congress to hear their stories. Nurses are struggling. Patients are, too.

They seek for Congress to pass legislation to extend COVID economic benefits, that expired in July. Also, they want the government to invest in the public health of American communities; and "for a dismantling of the structural racism that prematurely and disproportionately ends the lives of Black, Indigenous, people of color, whether it is by COVID or at the hands of police violence," a spokesperson for the group wrote.

R.N.s are speaking out so that the Senate passes the HEROES Act, a pending bill they are backing.

The union says this would protect health care, and other essential workers, by ensuring domestic production of PPE through the Defense Production Act and mandating that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration establish a temporary emergency standard on infectious diseases. The unions also say the measure would provide financial help in the form of cash payments, extended unemployment benefits, and daycare subsidies through the end of 2020 to families on the brink.

Union officials insist that nurses see daily the prioritization of profits over patients through local hospitals' management practices. They contend testing all patients for COVID-19 would result in filtering positive COVID-19 patients into units designed for their care. Still, since such testing is not happening everywhere, nurses are not being given the proper PPE while unknowingly caring for positive patients, causing significant exposure to R.N.s and patients.

Clarissa Cruz, the chief nurse representative of the California Nurses Association at Kindred Westminster Hospital in Westminster, spoke out on the issue.

"Nurses aren't being immediately notified of exposures to COVID-19, creating an unsafe situation for patients and staff," she writes.

Rallies and other forms of protest are scheduled throughout the region. In L.A. County, the sites include Southern California Hospital on Delmas Terrace in Culver City;
Providence Little Company of Mary in Torrance; Alhambra Hospital Medical Center on Raymond Avenue; Kindred Hospital Baldwin Park on Francisquito Avenue; and Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center on Sunset Boulevard in East Hollywood.

City News Service, Patch Editor Ashley Ludwig contributed to this report.