Low on essential supplies and fearing they’ll get sick, doctors and nurses told ProPublica in-person care for coronavirus patients has been scaled back. In some cases, it’s causing serious harm.
Every morning, between 7 and 8, at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, several coronavirus patients are pronounced dead.
It’s not that more people die at the beginning of the day, according to two medical providers at the hospital. But as a new shift arrives, doctors and nurses find patients who have died in the hours before and went undetected by a thin overnight staff.
Health care workers at several New York hospitals say they aren’t entering patient rooms as often as usual. They say they are worried for their safety and are trying to conserve scarce personal protective equipment. And they say there are simply too many critically ill patients to provide the sort of continuous monitoring that should be standard.
“People haven’t been seen in several hours overnight,” a medical provider at Long Island Jewish said. “And when the morning team comes on, the person is sicker, or dead…”
To read the entire article from ProPublica, click https://www.propublica.org/article/rationing-protective-gear-means-checking-on-coronavirus-patients-less-often-this-can-be-deadly?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations
