Who is looking out for 'nursie' and doc?

THE EDITOR: This is an open letter to the Health Minister. Sir, I am a certified health inspector married to a registered nurse. I was a patient at a local public emergency department last week for a fractured foot. That day, patients with seemingly non viral symptoms, such as myself, were made to pass through the same common triage area to see the nurse. We sat in the same waiting area.

There were no imposed and strictly reinforced seating arrangements of distancing between patients being employed. There was no cleaning of public areas during my four-hour wait.

On reaching the common triage nurse area, I enquired about a separate area for screening for potential covid19 patients. The nurse replied that there were plans to set up one but it was not yet operational. This implied all patients regardless of their complaint would be mingling together at most stages of the process.

I later overheard staff mumbling about how concerned they were about this new virus and the lack of proper personal protective wear to deal intimately with highly suspected cases. During my treatment inside of the facility, I witnessed no sanitization of floor, work surfaces and patient contact areas.

I have often heard doctors and nurses lament the general apathy amongst patients towards each other, towards the nurse and doctors and the marginalization of said health workers by their superiors. Yet many of these professionals despite of all of the aforementioned, heed their duty of care and serve with dedication and pride.

Data from the last two other novel corona viruses , SARS and MERS, have demonstrated that health care workers accounted for at least 20 per cent of those infected, and with covid19, so far, over 3,000 health workers in China were infected. Health workers becoming ill with the covid19 virus will dramatically undermine the capacity of care of institutions.

The questions listed if indeed are unaddressed in our local facility at this time pose serious occupational hazards that serve only to propel us into a vicious cycle of spread and in an abyss of health and potential economic catastrophe.

So respectfully I am pleading with you, Honourable Minister Deyalsingh, to address these issues to allay the anxiety and mitigate risk to our nation’s health care providers and consequentially to ourselves the public at large. Otherwise it would beg the question, 'who is looking out for doc and nursie’?

A Health Inspector

Via e-mail