***nurses.com reports check it out

Wow! That is really interesting. Thanks for posting!

When they first did the polls a full fifty percent said they would not work during a pandemic. So this is three percent up from that.

  New York State issued preliminary guidelines on ventilator triage in a crisis last year.  Do you know what the prioritization for health care workers to get a ventilator?  As I recall, nurses and other healthcare workers were in the middle or bottom of the list.  It was considered the fairest way to do things since there was no point in giving all the vents to doctors and nurses so to speak.  here is the link to the article:

http://www.health.state.ny.us/diseases/communicable/influenza/pandemic/ventilators/docs/ventilator_guidance.pdf

In particular, look at page 27. At the risk of sounding cynical, might it be tough to get them out there if they understand that they will be allowed to die without treatment because they do not meet the criteria and are not given any priority for putting lives on the line?  I am sure many of these nurses have little kids to think of as well.
Be Well
Denise

Here is one that says yes. The people I have spoken to in Veterans and also in Virginia have a fairly simple scenario for those of us who will be on the disaster teams. We cannot get vaccine or even shots for our families. It is a one person life or death thing, and we will be injected with "every thing they have got" before going into the infected areas. Nurses will be like gold in a Pandemic. With our years of medical training and hands on experience of treating and helping patients- in some instances this is superior to those who give the orders versus those who actually have to have skill to carry them out.

Yes, a lot of people will be huddle with their families, and not a lot of us will be out their in the wastelands with people crying out, dying, suffering, and looking for some kind of hope, compassion. During the outbreaks in Nigeria nurses and doctors were running down the road. One doctor who thought he was somehow divinely protected died when he went to investigate the outbreak.

Most masks and protective gear are not that effective. It is truly odd to be asked to wash your hands if the disease cannot be transferred by handling objects as well as bed clothes and other articles. Of course it can. During the plague, they burnt not only the people, but everything they had touched, their bedclothes, and still from 30%-50% died.

As a nurse on and off for almost 30 years I have seen a lot. Two of my best friends died from treating HIV patients. Two girls, nurses, I dearly loved thought they could touch patients and would not get it. One died a horrible death in a basement in San Francisco, treated like an animal, her sister giving her food and collecting clothes to be burned through a slot in the door. Fear.

We ate Thanksgiving dinner one year, our whole family with my cousin who has had HIV for 12 years and he made the dinner. I guess that proved the point for some. It did not prove it for my friends who died.

One stuck herself with a needle by accident but the other never was stuck - may have just got it from a kiss and bad teeth.

We don't, I don't condemn those during the Pandemic who are not willing to risk their lives to help others. We don't condemn the police who will not go out in riots where they would be killled, nor .gov which will go down into safe houses and be washed and scrubbed like those in Andromeda Strain.

I lost another helper last night and I am sad today. She and her family think there is no real risk and it is all one big fake thing being blown way out of proportion. In essence she thought a Survival Manual for most people wasn't necessary.

That one hurt deeply. I have poured my life blood into this, trying to get data out there.

Probably holing up will decrease the spread, but eventually everyone who is succeptable to it, will get it. They are working on a vaccine for what is going around "now." By the time they finish, the virus will have changed.. probably a lot.

So anybody here going out with me into the fields of destruction and baptism of fire? I wonder. Probably not very many.

Medclinician

Medclinician
Sorry for abbreviating your name.
Denise

medclinician wrote: Here is one that says yes. The people I have spoken to in Veterans and also in Virginia have a fairly simple scenario for those of us who will be on the disaster teams. We cannot get vaccine or even shots for our families. It is a one person life or death thing, and we will be injected with "every thing they have got" before going into the infected areas. Nurses will be like gold in a Pandemic. With our years of medical training and hands on experience of treating and helping patients- in some instances this is superior to those who give the orders versus those who actually have to have skill to carry them out. Yes, a lot of people will be huddle with their families, and not a lot of us will be out their in the wastelands with people crying out, dying, suffering, and looking for some kind of hope, compassion. During the outbreaks in Nigeria nurses and doctors were running down the road. One doctor who thought he was somehow divinely protected died when he went to investigate the outbreak. Most masks and protective gear are not that effective. It is truly odd to be asked to wash your hands if the disease cannot be transferred by handling objects as well as bed clothes and other articles. Of course it can. During the plague, they burnt not only the people, but everything they had touched, their bedclothes, and still from 30%-50% died. As a nurse on and off for almost 30 years I have seen a lot. Two of my best friends died from treating HIV patients. Two girls, nurses, I dearly loved thought they could touch patients and would not get it. One died a horrible death in a basement in San Francisco, treated like an animal, her sister giving her food and collecting clothes to be burned through a slot in the door. Fear. We ate Thanksgiving dinner one year, our whole family with my cousin who has had HIV for 12 years and he made the dinner. I guess that proved the point for some. It did not prove it for my friends who died. One stuck herself with a needle by accident but the other never was stuck - may have just got it from a kiss and bad teeth. We don't, I don't condemn those during the Pandemic who are not willing to risk their lives to help others. We don't condemn the police who will not go out in riots where they would be killled, nor .gov which will go down into safe houses and be washed and scrubbed like those in Andromeda Strain. I lost another helper last night and I am sad today. She and her family think there is no real risk and it is all one big fake thing being blown way out of proportion. In essence she thought a Survival Manual for most people wasn't necessary. That one hurt deeply. I have poured my life blood into this, trying to get data out there. Probably holing up will decrease the spread, but eventually everyone who is succeptable to it, will get it. They are working on a vaccine for what is going around "now." By the time they finish, the virus will have changed.. probably a lot. So anybody here going out with me into the fields of destruction and baptism of fire? I wonder. Probably not very many. Medclinician

Medclinician, I am also a  nurse who will be in the trenches. I'll be there as long as I'm needed. I love your words about "sometimes the ones who give the care are a bit mroe valuable than those who give the orders". Isn't that the truth a lot of the time? I think we've all had our share of training the up and coming docs who have no idea how to care for a critically ill patient and need a lot of help figuring out what to order, what meds to give, etc. I know a lot of people in my family have no clue whatsoever what nurses do for a living. I do everything from titrating iv's for a patient after open-heart surgery to helping bathe a patient.

Anyway, thanks for your valuable input, as always. I LOVE reading your posts! :) I may not always be able to comment, but I always read!

denszcz wrote: Med I worked ER and inpatient during the height of the HIV epidemic in NYC, never had a second thought about it.  Luckily never got a needle stick, I will not say it was because of skill.I feel sorry for your losses, it is terrible to lose a friend.  I am going out to see people now. I have been afflicted by many occupational illness through working with sick people and never gave it a second thought until I got exposed to something that was not so easy to treat.  The treatment caused me lots of problems but cured it. Since them I have held back more but never avoided a patient.  I am hoping I will do the same here. However, I no longer work in hospitals so it will be limited to the people who can make it to clinics and my friends and neighbors and family who need my help. Denise

I deeply respect you as a fellow nurse, and you know how it is on a code- we are a team.  Just like a day care worker, a little known fact is that nurses get sick - a lot. And if you have done this for years- you, as I, have seen most everybody working in the hospital coughing or making a lot of trips to the bathroom.

And we are told to stay home, and then we are told ER is stacked and ICU is full, and they are diverting and closing down the Trauma or a few years ago we were diverting to other states with some of the ER.  I truly believe some people are just caregivers. We don't do it to be noble. Had this one really angry HIV patient who was dying, out of his restraints (guess they don't do much restraints anymore-too medieval)  and trying to scratch the nurses with his fingernails. The guy obviously had neural involvement and his basic thinking was toast, as was his immune system, and it was heart rending that he had to go through the painfu process of dying he was going through- but crud-he was trying to kill us. Most of the people would not even go in there- especially security. He still had a heplock in so we could push and did something to bring him down. Faster than trying to inject him and wait. No time.  My friend Sharon, a nurse, was doing triples- and of course as on the airlines, everyone frowns and tells us- how scary that is for you all that we would work exhausted with the interns that were walking zombies on caffeine. Well, it is scarier if you have 50 patients and two nurses.  Anyone who has even done 13 (and we are not talking convalescent)- we are talking art lines which shouldn't even be on the floor- tons of piggy backs and g-tubes and everything that can plug up,  does- leaving you with a hallway of beeping unhappy IVs and other machines.

And then the orderlies and NAs call in and if you are lucky you might have one or two.  If the power goes out and you are in ICU and have people on respirators and RT is on stat call down in ER with somebody coding- and then you luck out and someone codes- who runs the code team... and while you are running the code team- who is watch the other very unstable patients. In the Pandemic we are going to have no temps, no back up, and 50% or less there. Its gonna be tough.

We in the medical profession are like law officers in the street who know what it is like inside. And like the girl on the grill at Wendy's - during a lunch rush- it gets crazy. When we are short staffed people make mistakes. Fortunately in my career I have never given anyone the wrong stuff or gotten in any nasty incidents.

No doubt, there will be some of us out there who definitely just go and don't think because we are needed. I haven't worked ICU for several years. But once you have done ER, you have done ER. And once you have triaged... you pretty much as in ACLS (even though they like to change that and BCLS) all the time.. to push this or that.-know what to do- not to shock a flatline.. etc. Like defib is defib not bring back the dead. This is not House or Grays Anatomy.  You think resorces, time, and who you can help and who you can't.

We are going to face the nastiest triage you have ever seen. Some of us are talking running a clinic out of an old building or whatever we can manage because they will shut down the hospitals. They are breeding grounds for the virus.

I for one, hope Tamiflu will work at all, at least long enough for us to take it, and maybe Relenza, and "some things they have"- and manage to cap, gown, and glove to deal with the sickies. We don't get bunny suits and this one is airborne. So we have masks that filer salt for protecting us against a virus. Supplies are going to be something else. It is going to be like working a weekend when the main pharmacy is closed. Only this time- there will be no pharmacy for the most part.. and they will just say - we are out.

Morphine- that's going to be a first out- all the RT type drugs for treating opportunistic stuff.. especially about 6 kinds..including Z-pak are going to be out fast.

This stuff can be intestinal. There goes your electrolytes, out goes your D5W and NS IV as everybody gets low fluid. The lab- to run the tests - well are you going to have the luxury of running a lot of panels and stuff on people who basically have the flu- and yet many have all kinds of other conditions. The diabetics, the RT disasters, nuero patients-

Well- triage will become military- much like putting soldiers back in the jungle to fight- fix the ones who are the least sick and the supplies will last the longest. The really bad ones- you just can't do it. Use up everything on one patient.

At Katrina we had those that nurses were ambu bagging- over days. The ones that are not that sick- are not that sick and should just stay home.

We aren't going to have the luxury of all the doctor pondering - I truly believe at that point we will pondering the last line - the wisdom to know the difference- and do the best we can.

Medclinician

Can some one answer this for me?

Thanks FluMom...

rehabnurse wrote: Hi Sierra779, While I can't answer you why your daughter is upset, I CAN answer about nurses recommending preparing. I'm a critical care nurse, as well. While I am not working in that capacity currently due to cancer and other health problems, I DO keep up with many of my co-workers. I can tell you that of all the nurses I know, I am THE ONLY one who is a prepper. Most of the people I know just don't care. Why? I don't know. Now, maybe they're hiding their preps from me, just as I don't go into great detail about WHAT and how much I have on hand. However, while we've all discussed current things, outbreaks, etc...I can say they all disagree with us "nutjobs" who insist  on "being prepared" for things such as a pandemic. Funny attitude for a nurse, a doctor, whatever, in my opinion, but maybe it's just my experience. Because I know nurses on that site that is posted above who ARE very into being prepared, not just for avian flu, or the next pandemic, but for all disasters. Sorry you fought. I don't know what to say about that, but maybe she's just having a bad day or something? :/ Hang in there! :)