Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

21 PATIENT SAFETY & OUTCOMES Nurses accuse PeaceHealth of retaliation after raising safety concerns By Kelly Gooch N urses who worked at hospitals owned or operated by Vancouver, Wash.- based PeaceHealth are accusing the health system of retaliating against them when they raised concerns about patient and worker safety, NBC News reported Feb. 6. Nurses spoke to the news division about their experiences, including Marian Weber, a travel nurse who was contracted to work at PeaceHealth Ketchikan (Alaska) Medical Center. She told NBC News that she raised concerns about critically ill COVID-19 patients who were placed in a unit with no central monitoring system and spoke up against the hospital's suggestion of keeping a nurse in the room for 12 hours. She said PeaceHealth terminated her con- tract in August 2021. Ms. Weber filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board aer her contract was terminated, and a hearing is scheduled for June 7, according to radio station KRBD. She seeks reimbursement for travel expenses, among other things. In addition to Ms. Weber, Sarah Collins told NBC News that she lost her staff nursing job at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Van- couver aer raising safety concerns, specifically regarding staffing and nurse-to-patient ratios. According to the news division, Ms. Collins was put on a three-month leave in Septem- ber 2021 aer giving a local news interview. She told NBC News she was terminated for "operating outside her scope of practice" and "failing to follow policy." She also has a complaint pending with the National Labor Relations Board. Separately, NBC News reported, there is an ongoing lawsuit, filed in April 2020, claiming that PeaceHealth Southwest prevented work- ers from taking required meal and rest breaks allowed under law and that workers were discouraged from reporting missed breaks. In a statement shared with Becker's, Peace- Health declined to comment on personnel issues or pending cases but said it emphasiz- es ensuring safety of employees and patients. "We can wholeheartedly reinforce that the voices and opinions of our caregivers matter, and any concern brought forward is thor- oughly reviewed," the statement said. "We have hardwired safety into all our process- es, including a longstanding 'safe to share' platform that empowers every caregiver — no matter their role — with the ability to confidentially raise opportunities to ensure safer care. is best-practice approach is part of our commitment to continuously improve and vision to ensure 100 percent safe care." "PeaceHealth medical centers' overall quality and safety outcomes have been maintained in spite of the challenges presented by the pandemic, and our approach continues to ensure top-tier care in the communities we serve," the health system added. n Record number of hospital patients caught COVID-19 in January By Erica Carbajal and Cailey Gleeson T he daily total of patients who acquired COVID-19 while in the hospital hit a record of about 4,700 in January — when omicron peaked — according to an analysis of federal data from The Wall Street Journal. This figure peaked at about 1,100 patients during the delta wave, and reached 2,050 during the peak of the pandemic's first winter surge in 2020. Thomas Tsai, MD, a public health researcher at Cambridge, Mass.-based Harvard University, who helped the Journal review HHS data, said the proportion of patients with hospital-acquired COVID-19 as a share of all non-coro- navirus patients closely aligns with case numbers in their surrounding communities. The data indicates the overall percentage of patients who contract COVID-19 in the hospital doubles on days when surges reach their highs compared to days when cases are at low points. In New York, for example, hospitals reported a daily peak of 620 patients in January, or 2.2 percent of total non-coronavi- rus caseload, who caught COVID-19 while there, coinciding with a time when communitywide cases were high. Despite all the precautionary measures hospitals take, such as routinely screening patients and screening staff, "the hospital itself is not an island," Dr. Tsai told the Journal, adding that when there is a surge, there is a high chance that people with undetected infections will bring the virus inside hospitals, making it hard to keep track. "That's where the fire skips the fire line," he said. An analysis of COVID-19 hospitalizations at four U.S. healthcare systems from March 20 to Aug. 21, 2020, put incidental admissions around 26 percent. HHS stopped collecting and disclosing data on the num- ber of patients who developed COVID-19 while in the hospital in mid-2020. It has since published daily statewide totals for the total number of patients without the virus and those who caught it while admitted. Not all hospitals are required to report both figures every day, which makes it difficult for researchers to calculate the totals. Researchers said the data is likely an undercount, in part because facilities don't have to report patients testing pos- itive after less than two weeks of being admitted or after being discharged.n

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