A frontline nurse working in New York on coronavirus patients claims the city is killing sufferers by putting them on ventilators.
‘It’s a horror movie,’ she said through a friend. ‘Not because of the disease, but the way it is being handled.’
And she said relatives of the sick need to make it clear as soon as a person is taken to the hospital that they do not want them hooked up to the breathing machines.
The nurse, who has relocated to New York temporarily to help with the city’s COVID-19 crisis, persuaded a friend — a nurse practitioner who is not working on coronavirus patients — to make the video for her in order to tell the world what she says is happening inside hospitals.
‘I am her voice here. I’m going to tell you what she has told me,’ said the nurse practitioner, who was identified only as Sara NP. ‘She wants this to get out.’
‘She has never seen so much neglect. No one cares. They are cold and they don’t care anymore. It’s the blind leading the blind.’
A frontline nurse working in New York on coronavirus patients claims the city is killing sufferers by putting them on ventilators, advocating against them The nurse persuaded a friend, nurse practitioner Sara NP who is not working on coronavirus patients, to make the video to get the word out
‘It’s a horror movie. Not because of the disease, but the way it is being handled,’ the frontline nurse said through Sara NP. Pictured: Ventilator tubes are attached to a patient suffering from COVID-19 on the Medical Intensive Care Unit floor in New York City
More than 12,000 people have died from the virus in New York City, with another 4,300 dying in other parts of the Empire State, which is a far larger number than any other state in the country
‘People are sick, but they don’t have to stay sick. They are killing them, they are not helping them,’ added the friend in the video posted on YouTube.
‘She used the word murder, that coming from a nurse who went to New York City expecting to help.
‘Patients are left to rot and die — her words. People are being murdered and no one cares.’
Sara would not reveal which hospital the nurse is working in ‘for the safety of those involved.’
More than 12,000 people have died from the virus in New York City, with another 4,300 dying in other parts of the Empire State, which is a far larger number than any other state in the country.
Republican Minnesota state Senator Scott Jensen told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that Medicare pays hospitals three times as much if patients are placed on ventilators.
‘How can anyone not believe that increasing the number of COVID-19 deaths may create an avenue for states to receive a larger portion of federal dollars,’ Jensen later posted on his Facebook page.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has said that around 80 percent of people who go on the machines die, although he’s referencing patients who were already in dire conditions before being put on the machines.
Republican Minnesota state Senator Scott Jensen (pictured) told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that Medicare pays hospitals three times as much if patients are placed on ventilators
This is not the first time the use of ventilators have been questioned for its efficacy.
In a YouTube video posted earlier this month New York emergency room doctor Cameron Kyle-Sidell said: ‘I’ve talked to doctors all around the country and it is becoming increasingly clear that the pressure we’re providing may be hurting their lungs.
‘It is highly likely that the high pressures we’re using are damaging the lungs of the patients we are putting the breathing tubes in.
‘It’s not our fault. We didn’t know,’ added Kyle-Sidell, saying that is the way other acute respiratory syndromes have been treated.
‘We are running the ventilators the wrong way,’ he said, calling for the protocols to be changed.
‘COVID positive patients need oxygen, they do not need pressure. They will need ventilators, but they must be programmed differently.’
Kyle-Siddell did not return calls from DailyMail.com. He told Medscape on April 6 he stepped down from working in the intensive care unit at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn because he didn’t want to follow the hospital’s ventilator protocol.
‘I could not morally, in a patient-doctor relationship, continue the current protocols which, again, are the protocols of the top hospitals in the country.
‘I could not continue those,’ he said. ‘You can’t have one doctor just doing their own protocol.’
Maimonides also did not answer a request for comment.
Sara said COVID-19 patients are placed on ventilators rather than less invasive CPAP or BiPAP machines due to fears about the virus spreading.
And in a YouTube video posted earlier this month New York emergency room doctor Cameron Kyle-Sidell (pictured) said: ‘I’ve talked to doctors all around the country and it is becoming increasingly clear that the pressure we’re providing may be hurting their lungs. Kyle-Siddell later said he stepped down from working in the intensive care unit at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn because he didn’t want to follow the hospital’s ventilator protocol
She said there are other problems in the ‘crappy’ hospital where her friend is working, such as lack of personal protective equipment. Pictured: A file photo made available by the US Navy showing an Army Specialist assembling a T1 Hamilton ventilator in a mobile lab unit at Javits New York Medical Station
She said: ‘The patients don’t know any better. They don’t have family with them. There is no one there with them to advocate for them. So they are scared, and they give consent.
‘The ventilators have high pressure, which then causes barotrauma, it causes trauma to the lungs’, adding that the best way to survive is to ‘buck the system.’
‘Your loved one is not going to have you in there advocating for them once they go in, you’re not allowed in.
‘Do not give consent for intubation if you don’t want to be intubated or for your loved one to be intubated… As soon as you give that consent, you might not come out of it.’
And she said if there is a specific medication — such as the hydroxychloroquine that President Donald Trump has touted, the best thing to do is lie.
‘A tip from inside the system — if you want a medication to be given, you’ve got to report that it’s an at-home medication, and that you demand that it be continued.’
Sara claimed patients who stop breathing are not resuscitated — again due to fear of the virus spreading.
‘Full code, not doing compressions, family is not there. They have no one to answer to. No one is being held accountable.’
She said there are other problems in the ‘crappy’ hospital where her friend is working, such as lack of personal protective equipment.
‘They stay in the same PPE all shift, except for the top pair of gloves… they’re only changing the gloves on the outside.’
Sara (left and right) said COVID-19 patients are placed on ventilators rather than less invasive CPAP or BiPAP machines due to fears about the virus spreading. She explained: ‘The ventilators have high pressure, which then causes barotrauma, it causes trauma to the lungs’
The nurse practitioner also criticized some of the nurses who are risking their own health to treat COVID-19 patients. ‘We have nurses being celebrated as heroes who are killing people,’ she said. ‘They’re not heroes, and they’re being brainwashed to think they’re doing something. Pictured: Nurses arriving to Elmhurst Hospital in New York on Saturday
They keep the same gowns and masks on because the theory is that all patients on a COVID-19 floor will already have the virus. But she says that is faulty logic as some are there to see if the coronavirus can be ruled out.
‘So even if they’re rule-out COVID and they’re not COVID they’re going to get COVID because they’re using the same PPE all shift and they’re carrying that contamination to all of the patients
And she claimed some nurses who have been brought to New York are sitting in hotels never being called.
‘Yet they’re still understaffed and there are hundreds of people, hundreds of nurses in the hotels waiting to be called on to a shift. So there is manpower enough if the goal were to actually save people, but resources are not being utilized properly or to full capacity in a way that maximizes the patient benefit or improves the outcomes.’
The nurse practitioner also criticized some of the nurses who are risking their own health to treat COVID-19 patients.
‘We have nurses being celebrated as heroes who are killing people,’ she said.
‘They’re not heroes, and they’re being brainwashed to think they’re doing something great just by going to work because they’re brave enough to go to work.
‘But what are you doing at work? You’re certainly not saving people if you’re not even running codes. You’re not even going into patients’ rooms. You’re a coward. You’re hurting people, you’re killing them, you’re contributing to the problem.
The nurse practitioner said she knows she will receive hate messages for her comments. ‘Frankly, I don’t care because this could save someone’s life.’