X-Message-Number: 22560 Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 14:12:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Christine Gaspar <> Subject: re: my SARS update, as taken from a press article --0-554068993-1064178777=:6759 I wanted to mention a couple of points regarding this article I submitted yesterday. I work in the ER at North York General. When I submitted updates over the summer, it was regarding North York Gen. The parts of this article referring to that hospital, validate my earlier submissions, as the investigation that this reporter has undertaken, re-iterates many of the concerns I posted in earlier cryonet messages. As well, when I spoke of our physician who was in charge of the SARS outbreak, in our hospital, I was referring to Dr Mederski, who in this article was instructed not to comment, as she is part of a judicial hearing on these matters. I did earlier say, as some of you may recall, that over the next year there would be hell to pay over this disaster. It looks like I might be right- there are more hearings, and investigations than I initially thought. I'm glad. Apparantly, the College of Nurses in Ontario, sent its members a questionnaire, regarding the events of this past year, to fill out as part of another investigation. Unfortunately, I did not receive a copy of this. I blame it on the mail system in the condo where I live...I have experienced many errors in mail delivery, and I am not entirely confident in the individual who distributes our mail. As I read this article, I got the sense that the senior management was trying to say that everyone did their best, and that mistakes were made, but they are trying to give the public the idea that no one was intentionally negligent in these matters. I disagree. As I have said before, there were those, who were decision makers, that were given indisputable evidence that they were dealing with a new outbreak. They chose to ignore this evidence, and in fact on some occasions, told us we didn't know what we were talking about. I look forward to my day in court, when I can demand that those who deserve it, should be held fully accountable for their actions. When all is said and done, life in our hospital has changed for good. We screen everyone entering the hospital- staff, visitors and patients. All patients and visitors must wear masks in our department. Many hospitals in this area no longer take these measures. Our triage nurses wear full protective gear at all times. Anyone appearing with a fever, and respiratory symptoms is immediately isolated. When ever giving care to any patient with such symptoms, our nurses and doctors don full protective gear-no exceptions. At least some of us learned from this. The hepafilters remain in the rooms we have designated as isolation rooms, and the plastic curtains/barriers are still up in these cubicles. We have a new computerized tracking system, in our department, and a lot of protective measures have been incorporated into it- various areas where we can "red flag" potentially infectious patients. I am very glad that we have maintained our vigilance. At this time, I am aware that many hospitals in our area have not maintained these precautions. I hope they do not have to learn these lessons the hard way, like we did- for the sake of all of us. Christine Gaspar --0-554068993-1064178777=:6759 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=22560