‘We should be fighting COVID and not fighting for personal protection’: Local nurses join national gatherings to demand better protection against COVID-19

OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — Nurses gathered outside several Central Florida hospitals on Friday holding signs demanding better protection to keep them safe on the job amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“We need people to realize that there is not protection for us in multiple ways,” said registered nurse Jacquelyn Reeder.

Nurses from the Osceola Regional Medical Center took a “silent stand” marking May Day as a call for action from their employer, HCA North Florida Group, to give them better personal protective equipment.

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“We still need PPE,” Reeder said. “We should be fighting COVID and not fighting for personal protection.”

The local nurses joined more than 95,000 National Nurses United union members taking this same step outside hospitals across the country on Friday.

In some cases, the union says a doctor gets a respirator while a nurse is left with a surgical mask. In other cases, the union said if nurses are lucky enough to get an N-95 mask, they must share and recycle them.

The union wants employers to provide nurses with powered air-purifying respirators, single use of N-95s, and coveralls that incorporate head and shoe coverings, as well as gloves.

They have also asked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to pass an enforceable, emergency mandate requiring the strongest PPE for health workers on the front lines of COVID-19.

“We want to take care of people's families but to do that we have to be safe,” Reeder said. “If there's no nurses, there's no patient care. There needs to be standards and they need to be reinforced.”

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HCA told Channel 9 that it continues to provide safeguards that are consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines ​and accuses the union of exploiting the crisis to attract more members.

OSHA said it is still working on a response to the union’s claims.

Osceola Regional Medical Center statement sent the following statement to Channel 9:

“Since the onset of this global pandemic, which has strained the worldwide supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Osceola Regional Medical Center’s goal has been to protect our frontline clinicians and caregivers so they are able to continue to care for our patients and community. Meanwhile, this union is trying to exploit the crisis to advance its own interests—organizing more members. We are proud of the support our hospital is providing to our nurses who exhibit amazing courage every day in meeting the challenges of this health crisis. Our efforts to protect our colleagues while at work and at home include:

• A universal masking policy implemented in March requiring all staff in all areas to wear masks, including N95s, in line with CDC guidance
• Screening for all patients, visitors and staff before entering facilities
• For colleagues with reduced hours due to the pandemic, we instituted a pandemic pay program that continues to pay colleagues 70% of their normal pay for any reduced hours, for up to seven weeks.

In addition, we provide cleaned hospital scrubs each shift for colleagues who care for COVID-19 patients to help prevent potentially carrying the virus home on clothing. We are also working with major hotel chains to provide housing for caregivers who provide care to COVID-19 patients and prefer not to go home to their loved ones after their shift. Our hospital has adequate supplies of PPE. We continue to provide safeguards that are consistent with CDC guidelines and help ensure the protection of our colleagues, not only today, but into the future as the pandemic continues to evolve.”

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