Senate to hear from Filipino American nurse leader supporting Medicare for All

NNU PHOTO

Bonnie Castillo leads National Nurses United, the largest RN union in the U.S.

National Nurses United (NNU) Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, RN, will join other leaders to testify at a Senate Budget Committee hearing today, May 12, to tell Congress why nurses, based on their frontline role in health care, support Medicare for All.

Castillo, a Filipino American registered nurse based in the San Francisco Bay Area, will join a panel at the 11 a.m. hearing chaired by Medicare for All champion Senator Bernie Sanders. D-VT, to be held on International Nurses Day, the final day of National Nurses Week 2022.

“As the largest union of registered nurses in the country, we at NNU are very familiar with the fact that no real change is ever won without collective action,” Castillo said ahead of today's hearing.

“Just as we have to fight together inside our workplaces for protections for our patients and for ourselves, we have to struggle in our communities and in the halls of Congress. In fact, we view it as an extension of our work to take care of our patients at the bedside.”

For decades, NNU members have seen firsthand how money-driven health care systems worsen medical outcomes for patients and working conditions for nurses and other health care professionals. This historic trend of mismanagement has been exacerbated by the global pandemic, and Covid-19 has only heightened the obvious necessity of moving to a Medicare for All model.

“We are seeing unprecedented momentum for Medicare for All not just among nurses, but as part of a growing movement demanding health justice,” Castillo said. “It is past time for the United States government to listen to nurses and listen to the people as we demand: Pass Medicare for All and guarantee health care as a human right.”

Foreign-born workers make up about a sixth of the U.S. nursing workforce, and the need is increasing, nursing associations and staffing agencies report, as nurses increasingly leave the profession.

Nurses from the Philippines and Filipino American nurses make up a large part of the health care system in the United States.  In 2019, one of 20 registered nurses in the United States was trained in the Philippines, according to TiME magazine.

With nurses leaving the profession, U.S. hospitals are again looking to recruiting nurses from the Philippines to fill the shortage of nursing professionals.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AAPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.

Nurses to hold national day of action Jan. 13 to demand employers, Biden administration protect RNs, health care workers

CALIFORNIA NURSES ASSOCIATION

At the frontline of the pandemic, nurses assert working conditions are unsafe.

Filipino American nurse leaders are calling for safer working conditions as the coronavirus continues to rage across the U.S.

“As we enter year three of the deadliest pandemic in our lifetimes, nurses are enraged to see that, for our government and our employers, it’s all about what’s good for business, not what’s good for public health,” said Filipino American registered nurse Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, who is president of the National Nurses United, the largest union of RNs. 

“Our employers claim there is a ‘nursing shortage,’ and that’s why they must flout optimal isolation times, but we know there are plenty of registered nurses in this country," says Cortez. 

"There is only a shortage of nurses willing to work in the unsafe conditions created by hospital employers and this government’s refusal to impose lifesaving standards. So this is a vicious cycle where weakening protections just drives more nurses away from their jobs.”

Planned actions include 6 p.m. ET candlelight vigil at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. and1 p.m. ET virtual press conference, featuring stories from frontline registered nurses across the country

Registered nurse members of National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest union of RNs, will hold actions across the country on Thursday, Jan. 13—including a candlelight vigil in Washington, D.C. for nurses who lost their lives to Covid-19, and a national virtual press conference—to demand the hospital industry invest in safe staffing, and to demand that President Biden follow through on his campaign promise to protect nurses and prioritize public health.

After almost two years of the pandemic burnout among the health care workforce is making the nursing shortage even worse. About half of medical workers reported feeling burnout during 2020, according to a study from the American Medical Association. Almost half of ICU nurses said in another survey earlier this year that they were considering leaving the profession.

“The workforce is burnt out. The workforce is leaving,” said Beth Feldpush, senior vice president at America’s Essential Hospitals.

For nurses still providing critical care, the poor protections make working conditions more hazardous.  Nurses assert that in recent weeks, the Biden administration has ripped away critical protections from health care workers and the public, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) weakening COVID isolation guidelines and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announcing that it intends to withdraw critical COVID protections for health care workers—right when the Omicron variant is exploding across the country and hospitalizations are skyrocketing. 

Nurses emphasize that being left unprotected by the government and by their profit-driven hospital employers which have failed to invest in safe staffing and provide critical health and safety protections, has created such unsafe working conditions that nurses are being driven away from the profession.

NNU conducted a survey of thousands of registered nurses across the country from October to December, 2021. Of the nurses who responded, 83% said at least half of their shifts were unsafely staffed, and 68% said they have considered leaving their position. RNs say nurses would stop leaving the profession if hospitals immediately improved working conditions by increasing staffing levels and followed nurses’ advice to grow the pool of available nurses. 

According to the survey of nurses, hospitals must actively hire permanent staff nurses and consider a wider range of educational qualifications; stop canceling nurses; properly cross-train current staff nurses so that they are competent to work in other departments, especially critical care, and institute optimal occupational health and safety protocols to protect nurses, other health care workers, and patients.

An earlier survey by the NNU found that almost a third of the nurses who have died from COVID-19 are Filipino or Filipino American.

Nurses also call on the CDC to strengthen isolation guidelines for health care workers and the public, and on OSHA to institute a permanent COVID-19 health care standard without delay. 

On Jan. 5, NNU joined leading labor organizations and unions representing the country’s nurses and health care workers to petition the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to order OSHA to issue a permanent standard and to retain the emergency temporary standard until the permanent standard goes into effect. Without the protections of a permanent standard, RNs emphasize that the health and well-being of nurses, other health care workers, patients, and the general public is in grave danger.

“Everyone will need medical care at some point in their lives, and when our loved ones are in the hospital, we want nurses to be able to deliver the focused care that all patients deserve,” says NNU executive director Bonnie Castillo, a Filipino American RN. 

“The working conditions that our employers and the federal government are telling nurses and health care workers to endure are both grossly unfair and unsustainable, and we are standing up on Jan. 13 to say, ‘Enough!’  says Castillo, who was named one of the nation's Most Influential People by Time magazine for 2020.

"We need permanent protections based on science, and we need them now because when nurses and health care workers aren’t safe, we cannot keep our patients safe.”

Click here to see a list of NNU local Jan. 13 actions across the United States.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter @DioknoEd.

Mothers Day: 'Our moms are heroes,' says nurse's son

COURTESY OF YAP-BANAGO FAMILY

It was always “others first” with Celia Yap-Banago, RN (holding dog).

Mothers Day this year was especially poignant for those families of nurses who lost their lives caring for COVID-19 patients.

Losing even one registered nurse impacts countless lives. Losing more than 400 of them to Covid-19 — many of them mothers, in a women-dominated profession — changes families and communities across the country forever. 

This Mother’s Day, the children of two Filipino American RN mothers who died of Covid-19 looks back at his moms’ incredible contributions to the world, and speaking out for nurse protections so no more families have to stand in their shoes.

The stories, courtesy of National Nurses United, the largest union of registered nurses in the U.S., tells us of two Filipino American RNs, but they represent the scores of Filipino American nurses who have died since the pandemic began last year.

“I would do anything and everything to bring back mom for five minutes,” said Jhulan Banago, 29. “We can’t do that and change anything, but moving forward, you have to be pretty damn proud of a parent who lost the fight to Covid because they were helping treat patients with Covid.”

Jhulan’s mother Celia Yap-Banago died of Covid-19 on April 21, 2020 — just short of her 40th work anniversary as a registered nurse at Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo. Now, Jhulan, his brother Josh, and his father Amado, take a short drive from their home to the nearby cemetery every weekend with flowers and Yap-Banago’s favorite snack: chips and a coke. They’ll do the same on Mother’s Day, followed by a barbecue with cousins, who are also nurses.

“We still set out a plate [for her] any time we eat, because we want her to know we are still thinking of her,” said Jhulan. “She is still very, very loved.”

“Everyone always says we wouldn’t be where we are today without certain people. In regards to my family, the reason why we are here today is because of mom,” said Jhulan, citing his mom’s hard work, getting her education, and becoming the first in her family to move from the Philippines to the United States. Other family members followed, and she helped every step of the way.

“She opened the doors to my cousins no questions asked, took them under her roof, under her wing. It was definitely ‘others first’ with mom,” said Jhulan, noting that even when his mother was sick with Covid, she talked about going back to work.

Yap-Banago and her colleagues demanded optimal PPE in the earliest days of the pandemic. Instead, Research Medical Center, owned by the extremely wealthy HCA Healthcare corporate hospital chain, locked up and rationed N95 respirators. More than a year after her death, her fellow nurses are still fighting for even basic protections, as her colleague Pascaline Muhindura testified to the U.S. House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections in March.

“I say this as someone who lost their mom: Everyone working with patients and people with Covid should have the proper PPE to do their job safely,” said Jhulan, who still keeps in touch with his mother’s coworkers. They even met for a socially distant lunch on the anniversary of her death. While his mother never wanted the spotlight, he thinks she would be proud to know that her story has been shared widely, all the way to Congress, in support of protections that could save her colleagues’ lives.

“The more her story gets out, the more it should hopefully give people the courage to fight for what they think is right. I hope no more 29-year-olds have to go through what I did. I hope no more families have to go through what we did,” said Jhulan. “Mom is a hero — she has always been mine.”

COURTESY OF KENNETH YUMANG

Kenneth Yumang, right, lost his father and mother to COVID-19.

Regina Yumang would go to the mall with her friends and come home with clothes that her son Kenneth, 19, hadn’t even asked her to buy. She was just that generous.

“My mom was a very loving mom. I’m an only child, and when I was growing up, she always gave her full attention to me,” said Kenneth, a college student studying accounting and finance. “She was the best mom I could have ever asked for.”

Regina worked as a nurse for several years in the Philippines, where she grew up. In 1986, she pursued her dream of coming to the United States, landing in the New York City area and meeting her husband, Dennis. When Covid struck, she was caring for patients in the ICU at the Manhattan VA, where she had worked since 1993.

Kenneth said his mom absolutely loved being a nurse. But when he picked her up from work during the initial months of Covid, it was obvious the pandemic was taking a toll.

“She always felt so depressed. In the first wave in March, in the ICU, all the Covid patients passed away,” he said. “She always felt so sad for those people who passed in the first wave because they had no family to be with them.

Although they were concerned about the virus, Kennth said as the months passed, his family began to worry less about his mother catching it. Then there was the second wave.

Regina Yumang was hospitalized with Covid on Dec. 17. Kenneth’s father Dennis also became ill and landed in the hospital on Dec. 19, passing away just three days later. Regina died on Jan. 17, 2021 at the age of 62.

“In our faith, we would say, the Lord takes the good people away early,” said Kenneth, who now lives at his uncle’s home, and who has coped with the loss of both parents through his Catholic faith and by being around family. This Mother’s Day, he will place chocolate and flowers near his mother’s urn to let her know how much he loves her and how proud he is that she fought to save so many lives. He hopes anyone else who lost an RN mom to Covid feels the same.

“Our moms are heroes, and they did everything they could to save more people. They thought of others before themselves,” said Kenneth, who believes nurses deserve strong protections. “Our mothers will always be with us, watching over us.”

(They are) “the reason we are here today.”

Nurse pays tribute to a Filipino American RN at a Congressional hearing

Pascaline Muhindura testified virtually before Congress asking for more protection for nurses.

A registered nurse honored the memory of her coworker, a Filipino American nurse who died from COVID-19 during a Congressional hearing.

Pascaline Muhindura, an RN in the critical care unit at Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo., testified before a U.S. House Education and Labor subcommittee urging the federal government to recognize aerosol transmission of Covid-19 and ensure that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issue an emergency temporary standard that will mandate optimal respiratory protections to prevent exposure for frontline workers.

Muhindura, a member of the National Nurses United, described her experiences as a nurse caring for Covid-19 patients during the Workforce Protections subcommittee hearing, titled “Clearing the Air: Science-Based Strategies to Protect Workers from Covid-19 Infections.” 

“Every single nurse and health care worker in my unit has contracted Covid because we were not given the protections we need,” Muhindura said, adding that she felt angry and anxious when she tested positive for Covid-19.

Muhindura described how the loss of her friend, Celia Yap Banago, a longtime RN who died in April of Covid-19, has not resulted in safer conditions at her facility.

“Despite Celia’s death, the hospital continues to ration N95s. Management is still forcing us to unsafely reuse the same N95 for an entire shift, and is recommending that we use surgical masks with Covid patients,” she said. “To be clear, nurses on my unit are still caring for Covid patients without adequate respiratory protection.”

"Celia didn't have to die if she had the proper PPE so from now on we nurses should be fighting for proper PPE so none of us will also die," a coworker said during a vigil in Yap Banago's memory.

Muhindura testified that hospital management at her HCA Healthcare facility are failing to protect nurses and other workers, therefore putting them in danger of exposure, illness, and death.

The hospital continues to ration personal protective equipment (PPE), a policy that hospital administrators say is following U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines, she says.

Nurse Cecilia Yap Banago died from COVID-19.

“Management withholds PPE and they use the CDC guidelines as their justification for putting our lives at risk,” Muhindura relayed to the committee, detailing the ways that union nurses have pushed back against management’s dangerous decisions since the beginning of the pandemic.

Muhindura urged members of the House subcommittee to push for CDC guidance that recognizes aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2, as well as an OSHA standard that mandates that employers provide optimal respiratory protections from aerosol transmission at work.

Muhindura’s testimony comes a day after NNU on March 10 released February survey results of more than 9,200 nurses across the country, which found that 81 percent of nurses still have to reuse at least one type of single-use PPE.

An NNU study reports that a third of the nurses who have perished from the coronavirus were Filipino American RNs.

The NNU and 44 allied unions and organizations, representing over 13 million members and their communities, have joined together to urge the CDC to update the guidance.

NNU first petitioned OSHA for an emergency temporary standard on infectious diseases over one year ago, on March 4, 2020.

“If these recommendations had been implemented one year ago, my colleague Celia, along with thousands of other health care workers, would be alive today,” Muhindura said. “We need immediate action so that nurses and our patients get the protections we need.”

Nurses support Biden's plan for COVID-19 and economic relief

NATIONAL NURSES UNITED

Bonnie Castillo, front right, heads up the country's largest union for RNs.

President Joe Biden's plan for relief from and safety measures against Covid-19 unveiled on Day 2 of his presidency received the support of the country's largest union of registered nurses. 

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National Nurses United applauded and enthusiastically welcomed Biden’s new National Strategy for the Covid-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness, released on January 21; the executive orders and actions related to Covid-19 that the president signed on his first three days in office; and his stimulus plan, the American Rescue Plan, released on January 14.

“For a full year, the nation’s nurses have been calling on federal elected officials to take comprehensive action to combat Covid-19," said Bonnie Castillo, RN, executive director of National Nurses United, during a virtual press conference Friday. 

"In his first days in office, President Biden has shown us that he is listening to the concerns and the expertise of nurses by taking immediate action on the worker health and safety protections and broader public health protections that we have been demanding.” 

The Biden's plan contains “the comprehensive plan that our country has been sorely missing in the response to this pandemic,” says Castillo, a Filipino American. "Nurses say they look forward to working with the president and his administration on the details of implementation and enforcement of this plan, and they strongly urge the administration to begin implementation promptly.

“We are particularly pleased that the president signed strong executive orders to protect worker health and safety and to improve the medical supply chain. In signing these orders, the president has begun the process of issuing an Occupational Safety and Health emergency temporary standard to protect workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, and has directed his administration to ensure the increased production and distribution of critical medical supplies, including PPE,” said Castillo.

The union also applauded the American Rescue Plan, proposed by President Biden, which contains many economic relief measures for which NNU has been advocating.

“The stimulus package proposed by the president would provide immediate economic relief and supports for millions of people across the country,” said Castillo. “Nurses know that this economic relief is necessary to help people stay home and stay safe during this pandemic, and to ensure the housing and food security that is essential to the health and wellbeing of our patients. We call on Congress to pass the American Rescue Plan immediately.”

NATIONAL NURESS UNITED

Nurses have been advocated for many of the safety measures in President Biden's plan.

In addition to the game-changing executive orders on worker health and safety and the medical supply chain, NNU pointed to critical and necessary measures in additional executive orders and actions signed by the president in the past few days and reflected in the Covid-19 response plan. These include commitments to:

• Update CDC guidance based on science. Throughout the pandemic, said nurses, the Trump administration’s CDC put nurses, patients and the public in danger by publishing dangerous guidance that was not based on scientific evidence.

• Provide paid sick and family leave and extend this leave to more workers, including the removal of the health care worker exemption. Nurses and other health care workers have not been eligible for the paid sick and family leave that Congress passed last spring, but they are direly in need of access to this leave.

• Increase federal support to increase health care capacity and respond to surge situations. The stimulus proposal includes $350 billion for state, local, and territorial governments, and an additional $20 billion for tribal governments. The president signed a memorandum to increase the use of the National Guard to provide pandemic support and relief, and increased the reimbursements for these services to ensure that FEMA covers 100 percent of these costs, while the executive order on “Improving and Expanding Access to Care and Treatments for Covid-19” directs federal agencies to provide targeted surge assistance to critical care and long term care facilities.

• Establish a national Covid-19 testing strategy.\

• Enhance data collection and ensure the transparent gathering, sharing and publication of Covid-19 related data. Throughout the pandemic, federal and state governments have neglected, hidden and manipulated Covid-19 data. Detailed consistent data is necessary to understand how and where the virus is spreading and how to best control it.

• Prioritize health equity in all aspects of the pandemic response, including through the creation of the Covid-19 Health Equity Taskforce.

• Develop a comprehensive and efficient strategy for vaccinations.

• Reengage with international partners and the World Health Organization on global health priorities both relating specifically to the Covid-19 pandemic and to other global health concerns.

“Nurses have been on the front lines of this pandemic since it began,” said Castillo. “For nearly a year, we have been exhausted both physically and emotionally, and consistently and unnecessarily put at risk at work. Hundreds of nurses have died due to lack of protections at work. 

According to an earlier NNU report, almost a third of the RNs who have died from Covid-19 in the U.S. were Filipino Americans.

"The actions that President Biden has taken in the past three days have given us relief and hope after a traumatic year," Castillo concluded in her statement. "We’re ready to get to work to make this Covid-19 response plan a reality,"

One-third of COVID nurses' deaths in the U.S. are Filipino Americans

Of the 213 registered nurses who have died of Covid-19, 67, or about 31%, are of Filipino descent, according to a report by the National Nurses United.

The deaths of Filipino and Filipino American nurses are alarming high because they only make up 4% of RNs in the United States.

The NNU report, Sins of Omission: How Government Failures to Track Covid-19 Data Have Led to More Than 1,700 Health Care Worker Deaths and Jeopardize Public Health, condemns the failure of federal and state governments to track and publicly report transparent, accurate, and timely data on the Covid-19 pandemic.

In California, where about 20 percent of nurses identify as Filipino, they account for nearly 70 percent (11 of the 16) COVID-19 deaths, according to the California Nurses Association.

Nurses of Filipino descent are more likely to work in higher-risk roles within hospital systems, such as the intensive care unit, emergency medicine or telemetry units, where high-risk patients are under constant electronic monitoring — putting them directly in the path of COVID-19, said Catherine Ceniza Choy, PhD, a professor of ethnic studies at University of California, Berkeley.

"Filipino nurses, here specifically in the U.S., are concentrated specifically in inpatient critical care services," Choy told the Mercury News. "Many of them are also caregivers at home, not only of children, but also their parents and other elders. And so part of the problem with the pandemic is these multiple layers of vulnerability and exposure."

The Sins of Omission report researched and confirmed the deaths of more than 1,700 health care workers. The report includes a list of the known names of 213 registered nurses who died of Covid-19 as of Sept. 16, as well as the known names of 617 additional health care workers.

Highlights of the report, as of Sept. 16, 2020, include: 

» At least 213 registered nurses have died of Covid-19 and related complications. » 124 (58.2 percent) of the 213 RNs who have died of Covid-19 and related complications are nurses of color, reflecting the broader disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on communities of color in the U.S.1 Just under one quarter (24.1 percent) of registered nurses in the United States are people of color.2 

» 67 (31.5 percent) of the 213 registered nurses who have died of Covid-19 and related complications are Filipino. Filipinos make up 4 percent of registered nurses in the United States.3 More than half of registered nurses of color who have died to date have been Filipino (54.0 percent). 

» 38 (17.8 percent) of the registered nurses who have died of Covid-19 and related complications are Black. Black nurses make up 12.4 percent of RNs in the United States.4 Nearly one-third of RNs of color who have died to date have been Black (30.6 percent). 

» At least 1,718 health care workers, including registered nurses, have died of Covid-19 and related complications. » Of the 1,515 health care workers, including registered nurses, for which facility information is available, 448 (29.6 percent) worked in hospital settings and 1,067 (70.4 percent) worked in nursing homes, medical practices, for emergency medical services (EMS), and in other care settings. 

» Nearly one-third of the hospital health care workers who have died were registered nurses: 143 (31.9 percent) of 448 total. 

» There are at least 258,768 cases of Covid-19 infection in health care workers, 166 percent of the 156,306 cases reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

NATIONAL NURSES UNITED 

“All of my nurses are amazing, but Filipino nurses do have the culture where their patients always come first,” said Annette Sy, who oversees 1,500 nurses (25% of them Filipino) as the chief nursing officer for Keck Medical Center of University of Southern California and who is married to a Filipino American physician. 

“I have Filipino nurses who are in that protected category, above 65 years of age, who could stay home and I wouldn’t question it, but they say, ‘I have to be here to help my patients,’” she told STAT, a medical journal.

Philippine Nurses Associaiton of America

The NNU calls for standardized, timely reporting between states and localities, rather than the current piecemeal approach, which undermines effective interpretation. A lag time of even a week can delay an effective response. Nurses call on all states and localities to publicly report at least the following data (for more details on what governments should report, read the statement):

• Daily reporting of data (as well as cumulative totals) on diagnostic testing and case counts at national, state, and county/local levels.
• Daily reporting and cumulative totals of data on health care worker infections and deaths at an establishment level, such as the specific hospital or business.
• Data on symptomatic cases must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels (influenza-like illness and Covid-like illness).
• Daily reporting of data on hospitalizations and deaths must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels.
• Hospital capacity data must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels; must be updated in real time; and must include total and available hospital beds by type (e.g., ICU, medical/surgical, telemetry, etc.), staffing, health care worker exposures and infections, and nosocomial (hospital-acquired) patient infections.
• Data on the stock and supply chain of essential personal protective equipment (PPE) and other supplies must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels.

“We cannot forget the deaths of so many health care workers, which includes 213 nurses,” said Zenei Cortez, RN, a co-president of NNU who works at Kaiser Permanente in South San Francisco. 

“These deaths were avoidable and unnecessary due to government and employer willful inaction. Nurses and health care workers were forced to work without personal protective equipment they needed to do their job safely. It is immoral and unconscionable that they lost their lives," said the Filipino American RN. 

Thousands of nurses rally for personal protective gear amidst pandemic

NNU

Nurses demonstrate outside of Kaiser Los Angeles Medical Center.

Seven months into a pandemic and nurses are still fighting for the personal protective equipment (PPE) that they need to care and comfort victims of COVID-19.

As frontline workers and actual victims during this COVID-19 crisis of a health care and economic system that prioritizes money over people, registered nurse members of National Nurses United (NNU) held on Aug. 5 at more than 200 actions inside and outside hospital facilities in at least 16 states and the District of Columbia to demand that elected leaders, government, and hospital employers take immediate action to save lives.

“COVID has exposed everything that has been wrong with our system,” said NNU president Zenei Cortez, a Filipino American RN who works at a Kaiser facility in South San Francisco, Calif. “The old way was a huge failure. Now is the time to reenvision a world based on nurses’ values of caring, compassion, and community.”

“Nurses know that this country’s rampant social, economic, and racial injustice has been killing our patients all along. COVID-19 is just forcing us as a society to face these problems,” said NNU executive director Bonnie Castillo, a Filipino American.  

Nurses want employers to protect nurses, other health care workers, and patients by following proper infection control practices, which include providing optimal PPE and a safe workload of patients.

The NNU is also advocating the passage of the HEROES Act which includes a provision giving another stimulus check to low-income individuals. It would be the second stimulus check received by Americans. The first check, provided by the CARES Act, expired July 31.

The House has passed a version of the HEROES Act but the Senate has yet to vote on it as Republicans try to trim the amount.

NNU

NNU executive director Bonnie Castillo.

The House has passed a version of the HEROES Act but the Senate has yet to vote on it as Republicans try to trim the amount.

“These recent COVID surges and uncontrolled infections and deaths, the failure of employers to protect our nurses and other workers, the outrageously high rates of unemployment and hunger, the totalitarian crackdown on protesters -- every crisis we are seeing now can be traced back to our failure to value human lives over profit,” said Castillo.

National Nurses United, headquartered in Oakland, Calif., is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the country, with more than 155,000 members nationwide.

Veteran nurse dies from the coronavirus a week before she was supposed to retire

SCREEN CAPTURE

Jhulan Banago holds a picture of his late mother, Celia Yap-Banago, during a candlelight ceremony.

A week before she was supposed to retire, a 40-year veteran nurse died after caring for coronavirus patients.

Celia Yap Banago, 69, a longtime RN who died April 21 of COVID-19 after caring for an infected patient at the Research Medical Center in Kansas City.

She contracted the virus several weeks ago and had been recovering at home while under the care of her personal physician," a hospital statement said. She seemed to be recovering and wanted to return to work but she passed away "peacefully" on April 21, said one of her sons.

Family, friends and coworkers held a candlelight vigil April 23 in the hospital parking lot to honor Banago where behind facemasks, sang a muffled version of "Amazing Grace."

“She was a great mom, I can’t stress that enough. From all my friends reaching out to me, the one thing they all say — even though most of them have never met her — is that based on your character, seeing you, your brother, how you guys interact with other people, she had to be a very strong, independent woman, an amazing woman at that based on what she does and how she lives her life,” said her son Josh Banago, 26.

Donning scrubs for 40 years and caring for people amid a global pandemic, “now we know she is a hero,” Yap-Banago’s family earlier wrote in a statement to local media.

Yap-Banago was one of many RNs at the hospital who have expressed concern over inadequate COVID-19 preparation at RMC.

Those concerns include insufficient supplies of the optimal personal protective equipment for RNs and other health care workers, delays in notifying nurses of being exposed to a suspected infected patients and staff and expected to continue reporting to work when exposed.

RN Charlene Carter says that she and Yap-Banago in late March treated a patient who was later found to have COVID-19. She says they treated the patient without N95 masks or any of the specialized protective equipment typically used when treating COVID-19 patients in intensive care units and other facilities.

SCREEN CAPTURE

Jhulan Banago, son of Celia Yap-Banago, spoke at a candlelight rally.

“Celia was an amazing nurse that dedicated her service for countless years at Research and a dear friend to all of us,” said RMC nurse Charlene Carter. “I feel that I can speak for many nurses when I say that the loss of one of our dear fallen soldiers on the front line of this pandemic is more than devastating, it is a wake-up call.”

Across the US dozens of RNs have died from COVID-19, thousands more have been infected. Yap-Banago was the sixth Filipino nurse to die from the deadly virus known to Views From the Edge.

As of this Tuesday morning, there are over 1-million cases of coronavirus resulting in almost 57,000 deaths. By 2014, 27 US healthcare workers have died.

Pascaline Muhindura, a nurse and union representative who has been treating COVID-19 patients at RMC, says despite Yap-Banago's death, there have been no significant improvements in the availability of safety supplies in recent weeks.

“We honor the life and career of Celia who gave so much of herself for her patients,” said NNU Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, a Filipino American RN. “No nurse, no health care worker, should have to put their lives, their health, and their safety at risk for the failure of hospitals and our elected leaders to provide the protection they need to safely care for patients.”

In the era of coronavirus: Filipino nurses waiting to come to US but Trump immigration policies in their way

Nursing students graduating in the Philippines.

Health experts say -- or should we say, they "hope" -- the coronavirus pandemic will reach its apex in the United States this month but COVID-19 will linger much longer probably into 2021 when it is hoped that a vaccine will be developed.

In the meantime, those frontline troops -- US nurses -- are taking a beating, literally and emotionally akin to the PTSD suffered by battlefield soldiers.

Waiting in the wings to offer relief to a tired and drained medical personnel who care for coronavirus patients each day in 12-hour shifts and many without the protective gear needed to prevent become patients themselves are a cadre of nurses in the Philippines, according to Melanie N. Beckham, president of Vintage Health Resources Inc. in Germantown, Tennessee, who specializes in helping hospitals throughout the southeastern US hire nurses from the Philippines, with it's large population of English speakers and a long history of sending health-care workers abroad.

Vintage has hundreds of Filipino nurses in various states of the company's applicaiton process, according to Bloomberg News. More than 100 nurses have passed the licensing and language exams. They’ve completed background checks and are ready to head to the US. Yet they are stuck because they can’t get their visas processed.

“They could come tomorrow,” Beckham tells Bloomberg News. “The demand is overwhelming right now.”

Donald Trump's restrictive and short-sighted immigration policies is thwarting hundreds -- perhaps. thousands -- of Filipino nurses from coming to the US to assist in caring for  coronavirus patients.

“Filipinos as a whole are very compassionate, very caring people,” says Zenei Cortez, a Filipino American nurse and president of National Nurses United, the United States' largest nurses’ union. “We have utmost respect for our elders. There’s a saying that every Filipino is related. We call someone else’s mother ‘mother’, someone’s aunt ‘aunt’. We treat our patients like they are our own family and that’s what I think makes Filipinos the best caregivers.”

RELATED: Filipino nurses vital to US health care

There are dozens of recruiting agencies like Vintage who plumb Philippine nursing schools for recruits. Some US hospitals have their own teams in the Philippines competing with the agencies with the lure of guaranteed jobs, high pay and the possibility of extending their special work visa.

Even amid the cornavirus pandemic, the chance to work to the US and earn American wages is still a strong lure for nurses in the Philippines, whose nurse education program, like much of the country's educational system, was patterned after the US as one of the side effects of being  a US colony for almost 50 years.

Even though the Philippines gained its independence in 1946, for over a century, the image of the United States as the land of opportunity has been hammered into the Filipinos' psyche from infancy to adulthood and that belief is still being reinforced through the deeply ingrained mythology surrounding the Philippines' former colonial master and the enormously influential soft power of America's pop culture.

Since Donald Trump took office on a promise to crack down on immigration, nurses from the Philippines have faced more red tape. Officials return about 50% of Vintage’s applications and demand additional paperwork, up from just 5% of applications during the Obama administration, Beckham said.

Nurses from the Philippines could make a significant dent in the nursing shortage, said Leo-Felix M. Jurado, chair of the Dept. of Nursing at William Paterson University in New Jersey and a board member of the Philippine Nurses Association of America. 

According to Jurado, there are about 150,000 nurses from the Philippines working in the US, up from approximately 120,000 in 2013. Even though Filipinos make up about 1% of the total US population, they make up about 4% of the nation's nurses. 

In some states, the impact of Filipino nurses is self-evident. Together with the US-educated Filipino American nurses, in California, where the Filipino segment of the population is around 4%, they make up about 20% of the nursing workforce; in Hawaii, they comprise about 31% of the nurses.

In 2019, about 5,100 people from the Philippines received the EB-3 visas commonly used for nurses, down by a third from 2015, reports Bloomberg.

“It’s absolutely been harder in the Trump administration to get people in,” said Costantini, who is also CEO of Avant Healthcare Professionals, a recruiting company in Florida. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services “has been delaying and denying visa applications that were once easily approved.”

A recruiting brochure aimed at nursing graduates in the Philippines touts working in the United States.

US hospitals and recruiters are finding increasing competition for Filipino nurses from other countries. In Australia, Great Britain and in the Middle East, Filipinos make up a significant portion of their nursing workforce and they are also in demand in Italy, France and Canada.

One recruitment agency in Germany reportedly had a goal of finding 200,000 nurses from the Philippines over a four-year period from 2016 to 2020.d

However, the nursing shortage in the US shows no signs of abating as the Baby Boomer workforce moves into retirement and nurses burnout from COVID-19 The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 11 million additional nurses are needed to avoid a further shortage.

“It would be really, really bad for health care in America if the country turned its back on immigrants,” says Dahlia Tayag, a Filipino American clinical nurse at UC San Diego Medical Center. “Hospitals and other health care agencies are filled with immigrants. If they limit that and there’s not enough people going into the field of nursing, it would be a disaster for our patients. There would be no one to take care of them.”

Nurses risking their lives caring for coronavirus patients plead for more protective gear

Nationwide, nurses are pleading for help from Donald Trump who can order manufacturers to make protective gear.

As the first member of the National Nurses United (NNU) diedThursday, the union made a new appeal for more protective gear to care for patients who have COVID-19.

Noel Sinkiat, 64, planned to retire in December after 41 years working as a nurse at Howard University Hospital died, but he was stricked by the coronavirus and died on March 27.

Sinkiat, a Filipino American, was the first member of National Nurses United, which represents about 150,000 health-care workers nationwide, to succumb to the virus, the union said.

National Nurses United members are on the frontlines of the pandemic caring for COVID-19 patients. The union said that the executive orders and presidential memorandum the White House has issued regarding the use of the Defense Production Act do not yet fully exercise the presidential authority available under the statute.

“The president has taken the first steps to exercise the authorities given to him by the Defense Production Act,” said NNU Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, RN. 

“We applaud him for using the statute to order ventilator production by General Motors, and we urge him to take similar actions to order manufacturers to immediately increase production of respirators, including N95s, and other personal protective equipment,” said the Filipino American RN.

NNU sent a letter to President Donald J. Trump Thursday to demand that he immediately and fully invoke the presidential authorities granted in the Defense Production Act to increase the supply of necessary personal protective equipment for health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The union called on the president to order manufacturers to urgently increase production of respirators, face shields, coveralls, gloves, gowns, testing equipment and supplies, ventilators and ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machines.

“Across the nation, our health care workforce does not have the personal protective equipment it needs to safely care for patients without risking exposure to the virus,” NNU stated in the letter. “As a result, health care workers are at risk of illness and death, which puts our entire health care system at risk of collapse. Further, when health care workers are exposed to the virus, they risk transmitting the virus to their families, patients, and communities. If our country fails to immediately protect our health care workers, we will fail to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Medical professionals caring for coronavirus patients have been urging Trump to order manufacturers to produce more personal protective equipment.  He has been reluctant to use that power despite mounting pressure from members of Congress and governors. 

The union has called on Trump to immediately take the following actions to invoke the Defense Production Act:

• Invoke Title III of the Defense Production Act immediately by directing increased production of equipment and supplies from existing manufacturers, directing other industrial manufacturing facilities to transition to production of the equipment and supplies needed in the COVID-19 response, and immediately generate manufacturing purchase orders to ensure expedient production of essential equipment and supplies;
• Direct the Department of Health and Human Services to gather information on supplies and implement restrictions on hoarding; and
• Ensure the immediate and continued release and distribution of personal protective equipment, testing equipment, ventilators, and ECMO machines in the strategic national stockpile.

Filipino American nurses say hospitals ill-prepared for coronavirus pandemic

NATIONAL NURSES UNITED

Nurse Bonnie Castillo, executive director of National Nurses United.

When the novel coronavirus hit California, Jamille Cabacungan, a Filipino American registered nurse at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, rushed to sign up as a volunteer to treat infected patients. 

She hesitated to answer, however, when asked recently about her training for that job.

The hospital is providing the necessary gear, she said, and more heightened training for some nurses. But not for all, and much of her training is coming from videos forwarded to her by the hospital, as opposed to hands-on learning-by-doing. 

Her colleagues are depending on her — “we don’t want to put our pregnant coworkers or those who live with elderly people at risk,” she added — but the preparation is less intense than she expected, considering the risk involved.

As California’s coronavirus strategy has moved from containment to mitigation, the health care workers on the first line of response to the epidemic are also finding themselves on the front line of potential infection. 

The frontline caregivers are also begging for more protective gear, said Zenei Cortez, one of the presidents of the California Nurses Assciation/National Nurses United.

Health care workers are begging for personal protective equipment (PPE) to help them care for sick patients without contracting coronavirus. Cortez, a Fililpino American, told MSNBC  that "it's not too much to ask our administration to give us what we need to safely take care of our patients."

RELATED: Why are there so many Filipino nurses in the US?

PPE, which includes masks, gloves, headgear and clothing, is quickly being used. Reports from Washington state, which has the greatest number of deaths from the virus, nurses have resorted to using bandannas for a lack of face masks.

National Nurses United (NNU), the largest union of registered nurses in the United States, today called on an embattled nation to dramatically ramp up health care capacity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Imagine we were at war. We are—with a pandemic,” said Bonnie Castillo, RN.executive director of the Oakland-based NNU.

The Filipino American nurse noted the warning last week by a panel of leading immunologists, epidemiologists, and infectious disease researchers at the University of California San Francisco which predicted 40 to 70 percent of the US population will be infected over the next 12 to 18 months.

“With a 1 percent mortality rate, the panel predicted up to 1.6 million people could die. That’s more than the total of all Americans who have died in all US wars,” said Castillo. “Yet our health care capacity is far short of what we need to respond to this national emergency.”

At present, Castillo noted, the amount of optimal personal protective equipment needed for nurses and other health care workers, is “drastically short of what is needed to stem the danger of becoming infected and exposing patients, family members, and other health care staff.”

“Instead of rolling back standards, as the Centers for Disease Control and the American Hospital Association are proposing, we need to substantially increase the supply of the highest standard of protective equipment. That includes powered air purifying respirators, N95 respirators, and other proper protective clothing and gear,” Castillo said.

One immediate step, she noted, should be the coordinated release and distribution of all state and federal stockpiles of PPE for nurses and health care workers.

“For too long, ‘just-in-time’ hospital management practices have prioritized profits over stocking enough supplies and staffing enough nurses to safely care for patients, and this has eroded the ability of our nation’s hospitals to properly prepare for emergencies like pandemics.

Level 3 Personal Protective Equipment provides maximum protection.

Cortez told Rachel Maddow on MSNBC that California Gov. Gavin Newsom says there are over 20,000 respirators being distributed but "Where are they?" asks Cortez.

“We should also prioritize testing and paid quarantine for nurses and other healthcare workers who are exposed, to prevent the further spread of the virus and to meet the demand of a surge,” said Castillo.

Various scenarios project up to 21 million people in the United States may need hospitalization, at a time when the country has only 925,000 hospital beds—less than half the per capita-rate of comparable countries. And if nurses and other health care workers are not protected, nurses emphasize, the hospital beds will not be staffed.

The shortage extends to ventilators, negative pressure isolation rooms, and intensive care beds, critical for treating COVID-19 patients. 

To expand health care capacity, NNU recommends the following steps:  

• Re-open all hospitals closed in the past five years (more than 120 since 2015), many of them in medically underserved communities. Bar the closure of any additional hospitals. 
• Convert some current consumer production to medical equipment, as China has done, including ventilators and the highest standard level of personal protective equipment for health care workers. At the onset of World War II, the Roosevelt Administration directed auto factories to immediately shift from car production to making tanks, airplane engines and other war materials.   
• Fund construction of new hospitals and other medical facilities, including community health centers, and mass production facilities for personal protective equipment and ventilators, which will also create employment opportunities at a time when many are losing jobs due to the virus-related economic crisis. 
• Implement immediate free medical education and training in public colleges and high schools for new registered nurses and other health care workers, without lowering licensing or professional standards.