Nurses at San Lazaro Hospital ailing due to overwork with COVID-19 fight

San Lazaro Hospital is a Covid-19 referral facility in Manila. The nurses in the hospital are overworked and underprotected as they fight coronavirus, according to the Filipino Nurses United (FNU).

Photo credit: philnews.ph

The FNU list the supposed physical, emotional, and mental sufferings of medical frontliners working in San Lazaro as it pointed out that 40 of the hospital's personnel which includes doctors, nurses, administrators, aides, and other staff have tested positive for COVID-19.

"Nursing staff and other health workers are treated as robots not human beings. The patient does comes first but their (health workers) safety should be top priority for if we get infected no one will be left to care for the sick," the group said.

The group added that more than 40 employees are positive for COVID-19 with more than 20 of those are admitted in the hospital COVID wards and others quarantined at home while waiting for vacancy of hospital beds to accommodate them. The FNU grief that the hospital's nursing staff members are allegedly provided with only one N95 mask for the whole 12-hour shift. Also, doctors have to buy their own personal protective equipment. The nurses' group also complained of insufficient accommodation and transportation, as well as an out of order elevator that forces health workers to use ramps in transporting patients to different floors. 

The alleged expansion of COVID-19 beds in the hospital without additional health care workers also led to the exhaustion of nurses.

San Lazaro's administration "converted regular wards into COVID wards with no staff to man such" and compromised the nurse staffing by "decreasing the numbers of assigned nurses in other existing COVID areas to man the new ones." FNU added.

San Lazaro Hospital's infectious disease head Dr. Rontgene Solante bared that 57 out of the 65 beds dedicated for COVID-19 cases are already occupied.

FNU said that the insufficient stress debriefing for the overworked health workers is another thing.

"The spirit was trampled in by the unjust provision and deceiving policy of the COVID hazard pay and special risk allowance," it added.