Safe Staffing Levels Needs Now
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Staffing Shortages Matter
Providence is a large hospital system where I live in the Pacific Northwest. In November of 2022 a 41 year old woman was brought to the Providence hospital in Everett Washington by Snohomish County Fire Department paramedics. Upon arrival, she was told to wait in the waiting room where she was left for about four-and-one-half hours without ever being placed in a room or examined by a doctor until she started having seizures.
Hours before her death, hospital staff at Providence Everett allegedly instructed an EMS crew to take her to the emergency department lobby and place her there until she could be seen. A registered nurse (RN) assigned her an Emergency Severity Index of 3, which is considered "urgent." An RN is also alleged to have assigned her a Modified Early Warning System (MEWS) score -- which evaluates a patient's physiological state based on heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, body temperature, mental state, and urine output, of 4. These scores are considered critical and requires the patient to receive extra attention.
A doctor documented her as critically ill "with significant risk to decompensate and even death, requiring prompt bedside evaluation and intervention," .
In addition, a triage nurse is alleged to have entered standing orders that were signed by a physician, with the orders including a comprehensive metabolic panel. What she had was pancreatitis and a potassium imbalance. By the time the test results showed up 5 hours later she was dead. Had the results showed up while she was alive the imbalance could’ve been quickly corrected and she would have lived.
What would make all this better? I’m sure there are are a lot of primary and secondary causes here but if there were someone assigned to take care of her instead of just warehousing her until later, like a nurse or doctor, she might be alive today. Ultimately, a court of law will decide what liability.
This is not unique, two friends of mine sat in Emergency Rooms waiting for help, each for more than 10 hours and were busy having heart attacks. One of them was left untreated and the heart attack not disclosed until they actually saw a doctor a day later.
You can ask your Congressperson and Senators to pass The Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act (H.R.2530 and S.1113). It is worth noting that safe nursing standards are also called out in HR 3421 the improved Medicare for All Act.
For reference here is a link to the story.
ACTION
Tell your Member of Congress and Senators to pass The Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act (H.R.2530 and S.1113). Here is their phone/email. By phone: (202) 224-3121/ By email: democracy.io.
Or you can use RESISTBOT to send the message below by texting SIGN PKZMUU to 50409.
“I am your constituent and I want you to know that safe nursing staffing levels play an important part in keeping people alive. I just read about a young woman who was left to languish for over 4 hours in a Washington Emergency Department lobby instead of receiving the care she needed. She was in an acknowledged critical state and they let her die. Here is a link so you can read it yourself, https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/106807.
You can help fix this by passing pass The Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act (H.R.2530 and S.1113). Worth noting that safe nursing standards are also called out in HR 3421 the improved Medicare for All Act. Thank you.”
Good News for Public Health
I’ve written about medical disinformation over and over. As far as I am concerned, spreading lies and disinformation that can affect people’s decision to get appropriate medical help creates a significant threat to public health and so often result in needless death. We know the in the US at least 300,000 lives were needlessly lost because of vaccine disinformation. The Supreme Court said the Biden administration can temporarily continue to request removal of misleading content, like medical misinformation, from social media companies. (Washington Post)
Drug Company From Hell (Bad News)
Pfizer is jacking up the list price of its COVID antiviral nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) to $1,390 when it moves to commercial sales. (Reuters).
This is the drug that reduces the duration and severity of COVID-19 symptoms. It works well and is a good first line of treatment (ask your doctor). Well, “Omne, Negotium Portabit” (All the Traffic Will Bear). Without the ability to negotiate prices for the whole population, this is just the next example of gouging the public to the maximum extent possible. PS If we had Universal Healthcare, public insurance paying private providers, we could negotiate that fair price.
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Charley. chatbot abortion resource - make sure to use a secure incognito browser if you live in a state that has banned abortion
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United State of Women Reproductive health page (bottom of the page) has important resources such as medical support, access to Telehealth, prescriptions by mail, and legal support references.
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Chop Wood, Carry Water by Jessica Cravens
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it's why we have very expensive and poor health care here. It is not a new issue but is getting worse
Also nuses and probably aids are moved from unit to unit so they don't learn the issues for maternity care vs oncology care vs orthopedic surgery care and they don't get to know the patients. It leads to bad care, lack of interest on the part of the professional because they can't do what they've been taught to do and to bad outcomes.
beth