Now he was being asked to go into the room of a patient with an antibiotic-resistant infection without proper personal protective equipment (PPE).Īlaoui thought to himself, “I can’t do this. When he came home from work, he would remove all his clothes in the garage before showering, and would often sleep by himself in the family’s guest room for multiple days afterward. Alaoui was already living in terror of spreading Covid to his wife and child. She suggested Alaoui and his coworkers use patient gowns to work with all the non-Covid patients, even though the cloth gowns wouldn’t protect them from bodily fluids or other hazardous substances.Īlaoui’s wife is immunocompromised: she was diagnosed with breast cancer in January and started chemotherapy in February. Because of the shortage, Alaoui says, the supervisor told workers they could only use the gowns for Covid patients.
Over the course of a 12-hour shift, it can take a dozen to several dozen gowns per patient to protect all the workers that need to go in and out of the room to take care of the patient and to keep the room stocked and clean. Each time a worker enters the room of a patient with an infectious disease like Covid-19 or Clostridium difficile, they need to put on a fresh gown. If my wife gets sick, it will kill her.”Īt the start of his 12-hour shift on the evening of March, Alaoui said, he and his coworkers learned that their unit had fewer than 20 gowns to get them through the next week. Saber Alaoui, a nurse in the Telemetry unit, had fashioned the gown out of a garbage bag to protect himself, his patients, and his wife - who has cancer - on March 28. On Monday, April 13, Highland Hospital fired a nurse for wearing a garbage bag as a gown.
SEIU 1021, the union that represents Highland Hospital workers, is asking the public to email the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to demand that Alameda Health System, which administers Highland Hospital, reinstate the fired nurse immediately and hold AHS accountable for its anti-worker actions.
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