No favours for front-line workers
Gov’t insists hospital staff exposed to virus must wait in line for treatment
Published:Saturday | August 21, 2021 | 12:10 AMCorey Robinson - Senior Staff Reporter
Prime Minister Andrew Holness shot down any COVID-19 priority list for treatment and access to ventilators at a press conference Thursday, deadening calls from Nurses Association of Jamaica (NAJ) President Patsy Edwards-Henry and several healthcare workers for structured measures to ensure that they are guaranteed care if they contract the illness on the job.
With no priority treatment for healthcare workers having COVID-19, doctors, nurses, porters, and other staff may themselves have to wait for hours in overcrowded waiting rooms, hoping that there are available hospital beds and ventilators if they get too ill to breathe on their own.
With most hospitals now far exceeding their capacities, Edwards-Henry's calls followed the death of Percy Junor Hospital nurse Annette White-Best two weeks ago, the first known case of a nurse dying after contracting COVID-19 on the job.
White-Best's colleagues had tried for days to relocate her from the Type C, Manchester-based facility, and when she was finally admitted to the University Hospital of the West Indies in St Andrew, White-Best succumbed following a lengthy wait for a ventilator.
“In these matters, once it comes to care, then only the standard medical triage would apply. There wouldn't be any predetermined priority list. That would be problematic,” Holness told the press conference with the backing of Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton and Chief Medical Officer Dr Jacquiline Bisasor McKenzie.
“The medical professional would have to look on [patients] case by case and triage. We wouldn't give a predetermined priority list for persons to get access to oxygen, and so forth,” explained Holness in the event at which he tightened restrictions as the island battles the new Delta strain of the COVID-19 virus and while urging Jamaicans to get vaccinated.
Triage speaks to a preliminary assessment of patients to determine the urgency and need for treatment as well as the type of treatment required. Patients with more severe or urgent predicaments are looked after as priority cases.
“There are some people who are saying that persons who are careful and abiding by the law should be given priority in the hospital ... , [but] the medical professional at that point would have to make their triage determination. It would have to be what other patients they have to treat, and so on,” said Holness.
On Friday, Edwards-Henry declined to respond to the prime minister's position even as she visited Percy Junor in Spaldings to lend support to the grieving hospital family.
On Thursday, they lost another member, retired nurse Linnette Johnson, who reportedly died hours apart from her husband, both from COVID-19 complications.
“It is really rough on them,” Edwards-Henry offered, subdued in comparison to other healthcare workers who spoke to the newspaper.
Preferential treatment for politician?
But one healthcare worker has painted a different picture to that of the officials.
The worker, who is employed at the Princess Margaret Hospital in St Thomas, said that a prominent politician turned up at the facility last week with flu-like symptoms and workers were yanked from their stations to ensure that he was offered premium care.
Even before the politician arrived at the hospital, The Gleaner was told, arrangements were made for him to be seen as dozens of sick patients languished in the waiting area, some for hours.
“They had a designated area prepared for him away from other patients. They actually put him into one of the doctor's rooms. He had his own personal nurse and didn't even wait to be triaged or anything. They just took him directly into the room where a nurse was waiting on him to do his vitals,” recounted the incensed health worker, urging unvaccinated Jamaicans to get on board as “the world nuh level”.
“He was in there and was seen within 30 minutes, yet there were people who had been triaged from early morning, sitting and waiting to see a doctor for more than five-six hours,” he fumed. “Don't fool yourself to think you or me will ever be treated like them people there ... . If it was up to me, he (politician) would sit and wait like everyone else to see what poor people go through.
“Now, he is of the view that the system is working well rather than see what people are actually going through on both sides and fix it,” said the worker, adding that lack of protective equipment, long hours, and heavy caseloads have left him and colleagues exhausted. “A lot of burnt-out healthcare staff don't even care anymore.”
When contacted by the newspaper on Thursday, the politician responded laughingly, offering only: “People will always add and subtract as they see fit. No story there ... . I am good.”
He declined to comment further on the issue.
On Thursday, August 18, St Thomas had 355 active COVID-19 cases, according to health ministry data, with 2,299 cases recorded there since the local outbreak.
According to Bissasor-McKenzie on Thursday, there has been an average of 500 positive COVID-19 cases daily, with a positivity rate of more than 40 per cent. Roughly 90 persons are admitted on average daily.
“A few days ago, two or three weeks ago, we were in the region of about 30 admissions per day. We have now gone past the peak that we had in March-April in terms of admissions ... . It impacts our bed occupancy,” she explained.
Pitch for speedy care
President of the Jamaica Medical Doctors Association Dr Mindi Fitz-Henley believes that healthcare workers must be given speedy care. Doctors, she said, are also battling the physical and psychological impacts brought on by the prolonged pandemic and its deaths.
“We've always had a system where healthcare workers' samples are prioritised so that we can ensure they are tested quickly so we can know what to do. In that sense, it would also be important that if it is they are identified as being very unwell, they would be treated in an efficient and timely manner,” she posited, adding that while that was the case before the pandemic, such fortunes are dwindling.
“It wouldn't be that they are preferentially treated, but we do know that if healthcare workers get ill, then there is less staff to treat other patients. Unfortunately, we are in a situation where the good have to suffer for the bad. Many healthcare workers are and have been infected by COVID just from being at work,” she explained. “Unfortunately, the system is now completely overwhelmed, and it seems as though they (hospitals) have not been able to prioritise or respond in the way that they used to.”
One senior nurse at a Type-A facility in the Corporate Area was unforgiving, however.
Even as she recognised the impact of overcrowding at many public-health facilities because of the low percentage of Jamaicans fully vaccinated, she argued that leaving healthcare workers vulnerable after they catch the disease is ludicrous and jeopardises the overall health system.
“Healthcare workers are not paid well, and if it is you are working in the healthcare system, you should be taken care of and receive optimal healthcare. We are making sacrifices for other persons to save their lives. Why is it that something is not put in place to save our lives?” she charged, recalling the public uproar that came from the death of first-time mom Jodian Fearon, following challenges to find accommodative facilities last year.
“So why are we not hearing that for the front-line workers? Such priority for healthcare workers shows professional courtesy for your employees. Healthcare workers are at the highest risk in terms of intimacy by giving care, especially now that that the disease is evolving,” she argued.