From the Bruin: Dozens of UCLA Health nurses gathered outside a UCLA hospital Monday evening at a vigil to protest their working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The nurses held signs and candles outside the main entrance of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. The vigil, organized by the California Nurses Association, aimed to draw attention to short staffing, a lack of COVID-19 testing and a lack of contact tracing available for UCLA Health employees. Nurses from the hospital took turns reading names and ages of people who died because of COVID-19. Many victims were younger than 40 years old.
Jennifer Adams, a pretreatment unit registered nurse and National Nurses United representative, said employees need to meet certain symptom criteria getting clearance from upper management to be tested. Fong Chuu, the medical center’s chief nurse representative, said symptomatic employees are allowed to return to work two to three days after their fever has subsided after they test positive. Adams also called on UCLA to improve access to testing for its medical staff.
“While I applaud the university testing athletes and campus staff on a regular basis it is also critically important that medical staff who have been directly exposed also get regular testing,” Adams said.
Adams added there is no official contact tracing procedure in the hospital, and contact tracing is usually done by employees through word of mouth.
“Coworkers have called in to the unit and said, ‘Hey let everybody know, I just got a positive test,’” Adams said. “And so we’re doing our own contact tracing, which is not effective.”
UCLA Health did not respond in time for a request for comment...
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