Women’s Hospital to Provide N95 Masks for Every Nurse on the Front Lines

The 3,400 registered nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, are calling on the hospital to provide to every nurse the N95 masks that are the safest standard for protecting against COVID-19 infection. Nurses are also seeking critical information about who has tested positive at the hospital.

The Brigham and Partners Healthcare have refused to supply every nurse caring for patients with an N95 mask. Any patient – and anyone in contact with patients – may have COVID-19 because the virus can spread without symptoms. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Robert Redfield told NPR last week that an estimated 25 percent of coronavirus carriers experience no symptoms.

“If nurses on the front lines are not protected, who will be there to care for patients?” said Trish Powers, Brigham OR RN and Chair of the MNA Bargaining Committee at the hospital. “Every Brigham nurse needs the best practice N95 mask protection. Why are we saving these masks if the surge is starting now? If we get sick, we cannot be at the bedside, and our families and communities are at risk.”

After the Kraft family donated 1.2 million N95 masks to Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island last week, Massachusetts General Hospital President Peter Slavin told the Boston Globe, “Any worry we’ve had about the availability of N95 masks to protect our staff is behind us.”

The hospital has also refused to notify staff if a patient they came into contact with or a colleague tests positive for COVID-19. Gov. Charlie Baker just announced a Contact Tracing Initiative for the state that involves a staff of more than 1,000 people (with Partners in Health as a partner) contacting COVID-19 positive patients in order to trace contacts and communicate with them by phone to alert them to their exposure.

“The Brigham is violating widely accepted public health norms by refusing to disclose this information,” Powers said. “This is critical information that will help our nurses make the right decisions about their health and the safety of their families and communities.”

As of April 3, 154 Brigham employees had tested positive for COVID-19, according to the hospital website (newer data was not available as of April 6). This makes sense because there are many COVID positive, COVID rule out and COVID unknown patients at the hospital and only a subset of staff are getting N95 masks.

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