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.

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. 

FilAm History Month: Nurses carry on the tradition of Filipino American activism

A portion of a gallery of those Filipino health workers of those who have perished due to the coronavirus.
Almost every day, Kanlungan adds another one to its gallery.

 

As we move into October -- Filipino American History Month, with its theme of social activism, a hallmark of Filipino American history -- we must note that today's generation of activists include Filipino and Filipino American nurses in the front lines of battling the deadly coronavirus.

Time magazine named one of the Filipino American registered nurses and a labor activist to the magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. 

"When I recently learned that TIME had added me to the 2020 TIME 100 list of the most influential people in the world, I knew that our nurse voice of patient advocacy was louder and more resonant than ever," said Bonnie Castillo, president of the National Nurses Union, the largest labor group representing RNs in the country as she wrote in Medium.

Nurses of Filipino descent make up just 4% of the U.S. healthcare workforce, but nearly a third of registered nurse deaths due to COVID-19, according to a new report from the National Nurses United union.

On Tuesday, Sept. 29, National Nurses United (NNU) released a 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 and a statement on Covid-19 data transparency. 

The report and statement condemns the failure of federal and state governments to track and publicly report transparent, accurate, and timely data on the Covid-19 pandemic. The continued lack of detailed, consistent data endangers the health and lives of nurses, other health care workers, and their patients.

“We cannot forget the deaths of so many health care workers, which includes 213 nurses,” said Zenei Cortez, RN, a president of NNU.

“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 registered nurse, who works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, NNU has been tracking the deaths of U.S. registered nurses as well as the Covid-19 infections and deaths of health care workers because no one was reporting this information. The Sins of Omission report has researched and confirmed the deaths of more than 1,700 health care workers.

The NNU 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.

"Our state and federal governments must require hospitals and other health care employers to publicly report infection rates and deaths of their workers. We have the right to a safe workplace under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Information is a part of safety. But some employers are not telling nurses when they have been exposed or who has been infected. This is irresponsible and dangerous for nurses, health care workers, and patients.”

About 4% of registered nurses in the US are of Filipino descent, according to a Stat News estimate, but some hard-hit areas employ a larger share of this demographic. ProPublica reported that one of every four Filipinos in the the New York-New Jersey area works in healthcare, and they are four times more likely to be nurses. Filipino and Filipino American nurses comprise 20% of California's RN's.

Kanlungan, a website tracking the deaths of Filipino and Filipino American health workers around the world, has found that the U.S. has about three-times as many healthcare worker deaths than the Philippines.

The all-volunteer effort try to put a face and a story behind the statistics but it's not an easy task. They must get their information from a variety of sources and then confirmed. A more transparent effort in reporting could make it a bit easier.

Bonnie Castillo, (at microphone) was named on of TIME's most influential people in the world.

The NNU call 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.

After a few stories focusing on the Filipino and Filipino American death rate amng healthcare workers earlier this year, it has become an "old" story and editors and reporters are on working on the next breaking story. But COVID-19 doesn't operated on news cycles and the energy level of journalists, healthcare workers of Filipino descent continue to die from the virus at alarming rates and media outlets hardly notice it anymore.

As she wrote in Medium, Castillo says of her recognition by TIME: "This award lets nurses everywhere know that our expertise is recognized, and it validates our fight to speak truth to power. It means everything to nurses to know that the world is listening.

Congress has failed to act to protect us by addressing the immediate need to scale up domestic production of PPE and other critical medical supplies. Call your Senator at 202–335–6015 and demand they pass the HEROES act now.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A word of caution, this article is news laced with opinion. Readers are encouraged to seek multiple news sources to formulate their own positions.