Nurse fired from Detroit hospital files lawsuit claiming she blew the whistle on unsafe conditions

A Detroit woman has filed a lawsuit against a local hospital which fired her after she publicly expressed doubts about its preparedness for the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Kenisa Barkai, 38, is suing Detroit Medical Center for wrongful discharge and violation of Michigan’s Whistleblower Protection Act after she was terminated from the company’s Sinai-Grace Hospital on March 27. 

The company alleges Barkai’s was terminated because she violated social media policies by sharing a seven-second video to Facebook on March 17 which showed her inside the hospital wearing a face mask, gloves and medical gown. 

The clip was later featured in a local news report about the coronavirus pandemic.

However, in her newly-filed lawsuit, Barkai claims she was actually fired for speaking out about poor work conditions at Sinai-Grace Hospital. 

Kenisa Barkai, 38, is suing Detroit Medical Center for wrongful discharge and violation of Michigan’s Whistleblower Protection Act after she terminated from the company’s Sinai-Grace Hospital on March 27. She is pictured prior to her determination at left 

Barkai was working as a nurse at Detroit Medical Center’s Sinai-Grace Hospital, and had publicly complained about multiple issues facing the facility amid the COVID-19 crisis 

On March 17 – the same day she filmed her short clip for social media – Barkai met with the director of nursing at Sinai-Grace and aired concerns about the hospital’s ability to cope as the coronavirus crisis worsened. 

She allegedly told her boss that she was simultaneously tasked with treating COVID and non-COVID patients, and was worried that she might inadvertently be spreading the infection. 

Barkai also made comments about the hospitals lack of personal protective equipment, according to the lawsuit. 

The next day, March 18, Barkai appeared on a Local 4 broadcast revealing she was treating both COVID and non-COVID patients, and describing the situation as ‘scary’

‘It’s scary because we don’t know if we’ve been exposed, even in the previous weeks,’ she stated in the news bulletin. 

She was also worried that the hospital may be ‘overwhelmed’ with cases. 

Her appearance prompted the Detroit Medical Center to issue a statement to the network stating: ‘The DMC has taken the appropriate steps, and we have trained professionals and the necessary equipment to act accordingly. We can safely and appropriately care for our patients with the necessary supplies and equipment’. 

Barkai is pictured at right with her former colleagues outside Sinai-Grace. She is now suing the hospital’s parent organization, Detroit Medical Center 

Barkai – who has worked as a nurse for 11 years – was terminated from the hospital 10 days later. 

She is now seeking a jury trial and is seeking in excess of $25,000 with interest, costs and attorney fees, according to the Detroit Free Press. 

However, Barkai isn’t the only employee at Sinai-Grace to speak with the media amid the coronavirus crisis. 

Several staffers have previously spoken out about the chaos at Sinai-Grace, describing warlike conditions in the ER as a high fatality rate led to dire shortages of body bags and space to store victims.  

‘All three coolers are filled, the morgue and the viewing room next to the morgue are full and right now, we’re taking bodies to the sleep lab to store them,’ Jeff Eichenlaub, a weekend day-shift emergency room nurse at the for-profit hospital, told The Detroit News earlier this month. 

‘We initially had to double bag each patient, but we started to run out of body bags and began scrambling floor-to-floor to find places to take them.’ 

One worker described the hospital as looking like a ‘third world country in a war zone’. 

Another said patients ‘we know are going to pass’ have been taken off monitors to free it up for ‘someone else that needs it’. 

An emergency room worker at Sinai-Grace Hospital in Detroit shared harrowing photos with CNN which were purportedly taken inside the facility as it scrambled to treat an overwhelming number of COVID-19 patients earlier this month. In one photo shown above, two victims in white body bags are seen lying side-by-side on a bed and a third is propped up in a chair.  Two other ER workers claimed that the photo was taken in a room that is typically reserved for studying sleep habits but was temporarily used to store bodies one night when the morgue reached capacity

A second photo shows multiple body bags stacked on the floor of what is believed to be a mobile morgue parked outside the hospital. Two ER workers said they have personally witnessed victims being placed inside the refrigerated units in this manner due to space concerns with the growing number of bodies needing storage. The workers said that the blue bags in the photo contained personal effects belonging to the deceased

Meanwhile, harrowing photos allegedly taken by an emergency room worker at the hospital were released to the public earlier this month showing bodies stored in vacant rooms and piled on top of each other. 

In one photo, two victims in white body bags are seen lying side-by-side on a bed and a third is propped up in an arm chair.  

A second photo allegedly shows multiple body bags stacked on the floor of what is believed to be a portable refrigerated storage unit parked outside the hospital.  

Two other ER workers confirmed to CNN that the shots are an accurate portrayal of what took place at Sinai-Grace during an overwhelming 12-hour shift earlier this month. 

Medics were left scrambling to treat up to 130 patients at a time as COVID-19 killed around five people every 12 hours.

At least two patients were reportedly found dead after being left in emergency room corridors, sources claimed as they described a constant shortage of staff, supplies and space to store bodies. 

A  DMC spokesman said in a statement on April 17 that  Sinai-Grace has been impacted by the “significantly greater than normal mortality rates in the Detroit community.” 

Sinai-Grace Hospital has been battered by the COVID-19 outbreak, where it has been treating hundreds of patients who have contracted the contagious virus 

 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk