US hospitals tell staff to keep quiet about coronavirus working conditions
US hospitals are warning their employees to keep their mouths shut about their working conditions amid the coronavirus — or risk being fired.
“Hospitals are muzzling nurses and other health care workers in an attempt to preserve their image. It’s outrageous,” Ruth Schubert, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Nurses Association, told Bloomberg News.
She said the workers — who are toiling on the front lines of the deadly pandemic, many times without the appropriate safety gear — “must have the ability to tell the public what is really going on inside the facilities where they are caring for Covid-19 patients.”
In New York City, NYU Langone Health warned its workers last week that they could be fired if they talk to the press without prior approval, Bloomberg said.
Meanwhile, an emergency room doctor says he got the boot from his hospital in Washington state last week because he dared to publicize what he called the facility’s lack of necessary precautions, the Seattle Times reported.
And a nurse in Chicago also says she was fired — for sending an email to co-workers saying they need better protective face masks, according to a local report.
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