Coronavirus: Nurse claims she was fired for speaking out about lack of protection and hospital staffing

The nurse was fired from a hospital after calling for better staffing and trying to unionize her colleagues

A nurse in Detroit claims she was fired for speaking out about the lack of protective equipment and difficult staffing conditions at her hospital.

Kenisa Barkai was working at the Detroit Medical Center's Sinai-Grace Hospital treating coronavirus patients when she began speaking out about conditions at the hospital.

Speaking with WDIV Local 4 News in Detroit, Ms Barkai expressed fears that the hospital might run out of protective gear. Though she had her own protective equipment for visiting patients, she was afraid she might carry the virus out of the hospital with her.

"It is scary," she said. "We don't know if we are doing enough to keep ourselves protected."

On 27 March, Ms Barkai posted a video showing the equipment she was wearing before treating a patient with Covid-19. During the video, she is wearing a hair covering, a mask, gloves and a gown, and does not appear to offer any overt criticism of the conditions. She says she's "ready to rock and roll" before going to treat a patient.

Then, she was fired.

Speaking with Buzzfeed News, Ms Barkai said she broke no rules and that the video contained no confidential patient information.

The hospital's social media policy banned posts that interfered with the staff's work or that "create potential harm to others," but her video did not appear to violate either of those rules either.

Ms Barkai claims the true reason she was fired was because she'd been speaking out about conditions at the hospital, threatening to blow the whistle to state authorities and attempting to unionise the nurses.

Ms Barkai's lawyer, Jim Rasor, claimed the hospital fired her to protect its public image.

"You're dealing with a systemic problem from a Texas healthcare, for-profit corporation that is literally killing Michigan residents and putting nurses like Kenisa at huge risk, as well as making preposterous, egregious decisions to get rid of nurses like Kenisa during a pandemic just because they're more concerned about their reputation than they are about patient care," Mr Rasor said.

The hospital has had a spate of bad press recently; CNN reported that the emergency room's night shift nursing staff staged a sit-in, demanding more nurses be sent in to help. They also reported that patients were dying in the halls before health staff could respond.

Brian Taylor, a spokesman for the Detroit Medical Center, said the hospital was facing struggles that other hospitals across the country were facing.

"It's important to understand that everyday emergency rooms all over the country face dynamic situational challenges and even more so now in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis," he said. "Like many hospital systems, the demand to care for the ever-increasing number of patients is putting a strain on our resources and staff."

Regarding Ms Barkai, Mr Taylor said his employers "don't discuss matters related to personnel."

"As for staffing at the DMC, we continue to bring in additional resources to help us care for patients as volumes have increased as a result of Covid-19."

Ms Barkai said the Sinai-Grace hospital - which is located in a poorer neighbourhood - has always been the "step-child" of the Detroit Medical Center family of hospitals.

"There's always been equipment that's been outdated or old, or just not working, that you kind of just have to rig per se to try to get it to work," she said. "The environment itself has always been paint chipping, or dirty rooms, old bathrooms, no hot running water."

Ms Bakrai said on the day she was fired, she was accused of providing local news stations with footage of deplorable conditions inside the hospital, a claim which she denies. She claimed the hospital wanted to "make an example" out of her and she was fired.

"It really broke my heart and was devastating," she said. "I have like a nurse's guilt basically for being off the front lines."