PPE Archives - Merit Educational Consultants

Just wanted to share the love and appreciation for our local firefighters at Central Fire in Santa Cruz/Capitola/Soquel, CA. Not only are they on the frontline during the coronavirus pandemic, they are here to protect us from wildland fires year-round. Chief Steven Hall picked up our gift bags that were filled with 3-layered cloth masks, 3D printed facial shields, and special treats, to give to every firefighter at the end of their shifts this week. They’re gearing up for a fire season that will be flanked with coronavirus pandemic when it hits the 2nd and 3rd waves. We’re so grateful! During shelter in place (SIP), our fuses are short but we need to work together to support one another. Thanks to Michele Roush for sewing more masks and to my anonymous volunteers who made 3D masks and special treats.

May 11, 2020

Sharing appreciation for Central Fire!

Just wanted to share the love and appreciation for our local firefighters at Central Fire in Santa Cruz/Capitola/Soquel, CA. Not only are they on the frontline during the coronavirus pandemic, they are here to protect us from wildland fires year-round. Chief Steven Hall picked up our gift bags that were filled with 3-layered cloth masks, 3D printed facial shields, and special treats, to give to every firefighter at the end of their shifts this week. They’re gearing up for a fire season that will be flanked with coronavirus pandemic when it hits the 2nd and 3rd waves. We’re so grateful! During shelter in place (SIP), our fuses are short but we need to work together to support one another. Thanks to Michele Roush for sewing more masks and to my anonymous volunteers who made 3D masks and special treats.

May 6, 2020

Happy Nurses Appreciation Day!

Thank a nurse today — and every day. They chose this profession to care for all of us and it is a thankless job. Did you know that…

  • 8 out of 10 nurses say they and their coworkers don’t have enough PPE.
  • 8 out of 10 nurses say their hospitals do not have sufficient staffing.
  • Nearly 9 out of every 10 nurses say staff can’t request and receive COVID-19 testing quickly.
  • 8 out of 10 nurses say their hospitals do not have enough ventilators.
  • 9 out of 10 nurses say the federal government is not doing enough to ensure there is sufficient PPE and other protections.

Tell congress to support the Medical Supply Chain Emergency Act, which will force this administration to increase production of vital supplies like masks, ventilators, and gloves.  Now that’s supporting our nurses!

April 26, 2020

Delivering masks, shields, and wine to ER staff!

Just returned from Valley Medical Center after delivering our last batch of 3-layered cloth masks, plastic face shields, and bottles of wine. We set up our table at the end of their shifts to ensure that we would give the gift bags to all of the ER staff. Today’s shift ended at 7:00 am, so we were there at the crack of dawn!

With so little known about the coronavirus and what to expect with the shelter-in-place order, our doctors, nurses, techs and other frontline workers are stressed out. I loved watching their faces as they left the ER and walked over to get their gifts. Their smiles were all I needed to see as I sat in the RV watching from afar.

Thanks to Michele Roush for sewing masks, to my IT (who would like to remain anonymous) for making 3D face shields, and his girlfriend (also anonymous) for organizing the wine donations and discounts. Love how family and friends have stepped up to help, too. My sister Christine Grennier and my mother donated 500 surgical masks, and my aunt and uncle are planning to deliver a fancy meal and dessert to the ER staff.

Now we’re hoping to have enough supplies to do the same at Central Fire and AMR. These frontline healthcare workers help all people under stressful conditions. Want to help sew masks, print 3D shields, or donate funds? Come join us!

April 22, 2020

Have we learned anything from 4 centuries of plagues?

History repeats itself. Plagues have wiped out millions of people every 100 years for 4 centuries. That’s why we trust facts and statistics. When we aren’t testing our 350 million US citizens, yet the government is talking about lifting the shelter-in-place orders based on economics and not the status of COVID-19, I am outraged and disillusioned.

My daughter Nicole (ER doc) just texted this to me:

“If the first wave of the Spanish Flu killed 3-5 million but the second wave killed 20-50 million, how are we going to handle the second wave?”

I told her that she shouldn’t be a hero when protestors are heading back to work, taking mass transportation, and ignoring the shelter-in-place orders. My friends and I have made 300 3-layered cloth masks with MERV-14 filters and 300 face shields to give every frontline worker in the Emergency Dept at her hospital the personal protection they can use when the second wave hits the Bay Area.

It sickens me to know that come fall 2020, my daughter and all of the healthcare workers in the United States and the world will face the second wave of this pandemic that will overwhelm them and probably kill 20-50 million people.

Why?

Because short-sighted people who run the government at the federal level and in many states don’t understand that by lifting the shelter-in-place order to get people back to work again BEFORE we’ve analyzed the spread of the virus and antibodies, we may experience an overwhelming resurgence of the coronavirus that will topple our economy and kill over 100 times more people in the process.

We need to listen to the medical professionals and stop listening to the politicians. Hunker down, simplify your life, and then come out to play and work when the coronavirus is contained and controlled.

April 15, 2020

Gift Bags for Healthcare Workers

Just delivered 150 3-layered cloth masks, face shields, and bottles of wine to the nurses, doctors, and technicians at Valley Med today. When my daughter asked me to sew masks because she and her co-workers didn’t have the PPE they needed to protect themselves, I started sewing masks during every free moment I had.

I wanted to give her whole staff these cloth masks that have 2 pockets for filters so they know that we – the public, the patients – appreciate that they still go to work every day even when they are immersed in coronavirus without enough masks and shields. Thanks to social media, my friend Michele Roush has joined me in sewing even more masks. My IT has both of his 3D printers making face shields around the clock. My husband Rob thought that we should put a bottle of wine in each gift bag to ease the healthcare workers’ stress (for one night) so we did some research and got an amazing deal on 300 bottles!

We loaded our RV with the gift bags and all of the additional contents. It must have been quite the sight to see us filling gift bags as dozens of healthcare workers got off their shifts this afternoon. Nicole made sure we stayed in the RV – far away from everyone – and reminded us not to touch our faces even though we were wearing masks and gloves.

I didn’t expect the healthcare workers to be so grateful to receive the gift bags. I made the gifts to thank THEM for their service. It was a little gesture to make to make them feel appreciated. But they all came up to the RV door (that was manned by Nicole) to thank us. It’s like thanking someone for a thank-you gift.

I’m back at my sewing machine. New goal is to make 150 more masks and shields. We already have the wine. Until I know that all healthcare professionals have the PPE they need to protect themselves, I’m going to do what I can to lift their spirits and give them masks and shields. Want to join me? Please sew masks and 3D print shields! Have connections at wineries? We can do this! They need us!

March 31, 2020

Protecting healthcare workers so they can save our lives

As California Mother of the Year, and mother to a 35-year-old ER doctor, we have a serious problem when healthcare professionals do NOT have the basic PPE they need to protect themselves from the deadly coronavirus that has killed over 30,000 people.

Where is OSHA?  They are supposed to protect healthcare professionals with even more protections than standard workplaces because protecting doctors and nurses also protects patients. If a classroom has mold on the walls, the teacher and students are immediately removed from the classroom until the school removes the mold and OSHA inspects the classroom to ensure that the teacher and students will be safe. So why isn’t OSHA enforcing these guidelines and holding hospital administrators, state and federal legislatures, CDC, and the President accountable?

Doctors and nurses are reusing N95 masks for their entire shift, and given paper bags with their names on them to hold their masks until their next shifts. This puts them at very high risk of getting the coronavirus. These N95 masks were designed and engineered to be a single-use mask. They are supposed to discard them after seeing every patient. So when our frontline healthcare professionals are required to use the same mask between several patients, they risk their lives and the lives of all of the patients they see.

In a huge humanitarian effort, the community has stepped up to sew cloth surgical masks for healthcare workers to use when they run out of masks. My daughter asked me to make cloth masks with HEPA filter inserts so she can wear it over her N95 mask. Her hope is that these cloth-and-filter masks might prolong the life of her N95 to give her some extra protection. My husband and I have been sewing around the clock to make masks for her entire ER staff. People all across the nation are pulling out their sewing machines and making all kinds of masks for local hospitals.

Over the weekend, I contracted a courier service to deliver the masks we made to the hospital, but found that the hospital administration had put a stop on homemade mask donations. Seriously? Just last week, I spoke with the hospital foundation and they welcomed homemade masks of any kind. Their website even included links to YouTube videos and patterns for masks, and they gave the address where masks and other donations could be dropped off. But the links were gone and homemade donations information were removed. My daughter confirmed that hospital personnel were NOT allowed to bring homemade masks to work over the weekend.

If the hospital won’t provide enough N95 masks to protect their employees from getting COVID-19, how dare they demand that healthcare professionals work without proper protection? Forcing them to leave their homemade masks and other safety devices at home is both unethical and criminal.

Hospital administration has also stipulated that ER doctors can only give coronavirus tests to very sick patients who are immunodeficient, on chemotherapy, or on dialysis. This sets the doctors up for potential lawsuits from patients who claim that they were sent away without testing and proper diagnosis. By not testing patients who are probably sick with COVID-19, their statistics will be inaccurately low so administrators will not be able to sufficiently order PPE, beds, and the facilities they will most likely need in the coming weeks.

Just a few days ago, Dr. Lin was fired in Washington state for posting about his fears and frustration on the lack of safety equipment and worker protections on social media. I believe there are many healthcare professionals who are fearful of retribution if they speak out. After his public outreach elicited demands from his community, the hospital administrators started giving temperature screenings to staff entering the building and plans to separate staff from infected patients and outside screenings in temporary tents. So now hospital administrators and others are firing whistleblowers?

As California Mother of the Year, I am reaching out to mothers, fathers, and everyone to demand that the doctors, nurses, paramedics, staff, and other first responder professionals receive ALL of the PPE (including test kits) they need to protect themselves from the coronavirus. They risk their lives — literally — every day to take care of all of us. Please sign this petition to demand that our hospital administrators, OSHA, state governors and legislature, CDC, and the President do their jobs to protect our frontline professionals.

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