Everyone needs to see this Nurse's experience treating Covid-19 in New York vs Florida.
- Thread starter theLBC
- Start date
oh, and do you think something cheap like HCQ is going to get a fair test?
think again.
"Now we are not going to be able to, basically, if this continues, publish any more clinical research data because the pharmaceutical companies are so financially powerful today, and are able to use such methodologies, as to have us accept papers which are apparently methodologically perfect, but which, in reality, manage to conclude what they want them to conclude," said Lancet EIC Richard Horton.
www.zerohedge.com
think again.
"Now we are not going to be able to, basically, if this continues, publish any more clinical research data because the pharmaceutical companies are so financially powerful today, and are able to use such methodologies, as to have us accept papers which are apparently methodologically perfect, but which, in reality, manage to conclude what they want them to conclude," said Lancet EIC Richard Horton.
ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
And they used to mock those of us that warned of death panels and hospitals that were more interested in increasing their death numbers to hit "targets" than helping you........
This is only the Beginning of how bad "medicine" is going to get. You want to stay alive as you get older, you best be learning all about staying healthy and how to treat things that come up on your own and figuring out what small hospitals and doctors still are all about the patients.
They are not even being subtle about "rationing care" anymore, and the idiot class is cheering for it!
Just look at NY, the governor ordered people with COVID-19 to be sent to places where the most vulnerable old people were housed. Literally a death decree for them. Then he had the lying face to blame Trump for the deaths that HE himself ordered.
But you know, so many old folks as well as the young alike that will be trapped / harmed / killed by this are the ones who spent their whole lives so vehemently voting into power the same ones who are doing this to them now and championing the ideologies, thinking it will be done on "other people".
This is only the Beginning of how bad "medicine" is going to get. You want to stay alive as you get older, you best be learning all about staying healthy and how to treat things that come up on your own and figuring out what small hospitals and doctors still are all about the patients.
They are not even being subtle about "rationing care" anymore, and the idiot class is cheering for it!
Just look at NY, the governor ordered people with COVID-19 to be sent to places where the most vulnerable old people were housed. Literally a death decree for them. Then he had the lying face to blame Trump for the deaths that HE himself ordered.
But you know, so many old folks as well as the young alike that will be trapped / harmed / killed by this are the ones who spent their whole lives so vehemently voting into power the same ones who are doing this to them now and championing the ideologies, thinking it will be done on "other people".
she said they are...
admitting patients and putting them with covid-19 patients, BEFORE they are tested as postive.
using a test that takes 5 days instead of one that takes 45 minutes, with no real reason.
after 5 days, some of them will get covid-19 while waiting for results, many don't ever test positive...
but they are listing patients as covid-19, and treating them as covid-19 even when every test is negative
they put people on vents when they don't need to be put on them, knowing they will never get off them (almost all die after being put on a vent).
they are using a plethora of sedatives to make the patients even weaker...
they are using such high pressure, they are damaging the lungs, forcing them to use even higher pressure...until they are so damaged there is no hope.
one of the Elmhust vent patients survived (that she knows of) because he was a drug user and the sedatives didn't work and he pulled out the vent tube and saved his own life.
but these cash strapped public hospitals treating mostly black and latinos are getting $29k for each victim.
in florida, and other places she worked, they gave them HCQ and zinc and they all got better (except one).
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This is infuriating! I'm just wondering how they're going to discredit this woman like they did on the Plandemic documentary.
Just to cut to the last page of the book......for anyone who hadn't figured this out already....this "naturally occuring virus" has, and will continue to be utilized for financial gain, power, and control. The panic is fed to the public and they swallow it like vanilla ice cream. I've personally met people, in their 60's, where one husband tested positive, survived without hospitalization, and his wife in the same house, never has as much as a cough....and she was completely exposed.
This needs to stop.
This needs to stop.
oh, and do you think something cheap like HCQ is going to get a fair test?
think again.
"Now we are not going to be able to, basically, if this continues, publish any more clinical research data because the pharmaceutical companies are so financially powerful today, and are able to use such methodologies, as to have us accept papers which are apparently methodologically perfect, but which, in reality, manage to conclude what they want them to conclude," said Lancet EIC Richard Horton.
ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
The tests will reflect the results of whatever the leadership of said company want the results to be. My wife's best friend used to do testing for pharmaceutical companies, and there was ALWAYS pressure by superiors for certain results. This was with a pretty prominent and well respected lab that does a lot of it. She eventually quite that job as it didn't align with her ethics and integrity.
The peer review process is also an abused and perverted system, which controls the flow of information. Anything that's seen as a credible threat to "the system" or will negatively impact the fiscal capabilities of universities and big pharma will be silenced through the peer review process.
Anything that involves big money is generally corrupted. People like to think that the science community is beyond reproach and that the peer review system sees to a highly ethically and process driven way to maintain that, but it simply isn't so.
I have tons of friends and family working in hospitals, some directly in the care of COVID patients, and there is a lot of BS going on.
That's what really bothers me about this whole thing.
Sure, the virus is real, but the dangers has been overblown, by orders of magnitude, from what was originally forecasted. Yet, we are still under lockdown with the same draconian and unconstitutional measures, that were designed for an originally much, much deadlier virus then what we are facing now.
In the meantime, governments around the world have entrenched themselves with more power and less accountability, and one of the biggest wealth transfers happened in the past century.
People need to start waking up if they think that the government is implementing all these controls and measures for their "protection".
The better part of the scientific community, almost planet wide pretty much whores themselves out to whoever is paying them or giving them the publicity to raise money for the popular truth. The bulk of them also harshly beat down any "peers" that try to say things that are not "correct", not because their facts are wrong but it threatens the funding.
It's hard to see any way around it, as doing science takes money, and either private industry pays, or the government pays and in either case, the purse strings control the science.
that is how we got the climate warming is man made hoax.
billions are available to scientists that will agree with them, and virtually nothing for anyone that disagrees.
Unfortunately, she will probably go down the same path as Seth Rich, Jeffrey Epstein, and Ambassador Stevens
They will just do the same thing they did to those Bakersfield doctors. Villify her and take her voice away by removing her stuff from the public eye.
Her experience and message is not the same one that big media wants project, it counters their narrative, so they will cancel it out.
I fucking despise this cancel culture censorship bullshit.
Anyone ever ask the simple question?
"Why does a governor, county executive, etc. give a shit about me and thousands / millions of complete strangers"? There's some good people out there but not THAT many.
Well, the other side of the story is that she is full of shit and not experienced in ICU care much less virology. Make up your own mind.
zdoggmd.com
From a physician fellow at Elmhurst:
As someone who worked in those units and know the individuals and patients she referenced I can say without question that she spoke from a place of ignorance.
That she would use lazy and faulty conclusions based on superficial observations to assign motives to and assassinate the character of people who worked tirelessly is unconscionable. I know these residents and doctors, who paid emotional and physical (got sick w/ covid) toll trying their best.
Furthermore, I respect that she had concerns about patient care and applaud a system of accountability that would give her a voice to ask questions. THE PROBLEM IS SHE NEVER ASKED….. SHE JUST ASSUMED.
Had she have asked questions and had civil discussions with the medical team this is what they would have told her:
While it is true that some patients tested negative, those patients all had horrendously deranged inflammatory makers (with distributive shock on pressure) and chest x rays clearly demonstrating lung injury. In this case the responsible thing to do is to assume covid positive and give the available treatment. Speaking of which, all of these patients received an adjunctive anti inflammatory treatment consistent w CDC recs at the time so I’m not sure what her point regarding Plaquenil was.
This is because you’re likely dealing with a false Negative test because these patients were often unintentionally swabbed too superficially (i.e. didn’t get oropharynx because people testing don’t want to cause the patient discomfort and also limit their own exposure, which is understandable). This was a limitation of the test itself at the time. This also completely undermines the notion that these patients were inappropriately intubated for conditions like “anxiety”. There was clear evidence of
underlying organic disease processes and high flow O2 was often attempted prior to intubation when possible, but in addition to needing more respiratory support these patients also would develop encephalopathy and require intubation for airway protection.
She makes the mistake of comparing a limited experience w/ covid in Florida to a different population of patients (much sicker) in New York.
Each of her other arguments/points could be similarly refuted by anyone with first hand knowledge of the situation. You get the point.
This nurse may think she is helping in her own delusional way but effectively she is type-casting an entire community and hospital as inept, inadequate, and ignorant. I wonder if she would have made this video if she was working in the established hospitals across in Manhattan? I’ve worked shifts I’m both ICU’s during this crisis. While Elmhurst is a public hospital and as a result may lack some resources, I can tell you the medical decision making was consistent in both and outcomes were similar. These were simply sick patients. Inherent in her video is a bias and prejudice that is damaging in its own right.
Of course I was mad, but of this makes me sad more than anything. Sad for colleagues who were portrayed as inhuman/inept when they volunteered to do these shifts because they felt the call to duty (no hefty hazard pay required, like this nurse received). These same individuals shed tears over their patients, I’ve seen it, they just chose to do so privately, confiding only in their closest friends, rather than online. They also got sacrificed their bodies and got sick caring for their patients.
I’m sad that someone would hijack the struggle of an underserved community for the purpose of their own narrative, and in doing so stereotype them all in a damaging way.
But most of all, I’m thankful you took the time to stand up for them. They certainly appreciate it.
From a traveling nurse co-worker at Elmhurst:
First, as healthcare professionals we all can see through the misconception and ill perspective of the psycho that worked hand in hand next to me. Someone I thought was a friend, someone that was in the trenches of Elmhurst with me-I thought-for all the right reasons.
But, here is Erin Marie… Firstly, Covid rule outs WERE homed with Covid positive patients at the beginning of this pandemic-why- because the hospital was 80% OVER capacity. Imagine-we had 152 patients on ventilators when I walked through that door April 11th. We still have original Covid patients in the ICU units-some that were intubated at the end of March. They are now successfully trached, out of bed to chair, and undergoing pt/ot as they should be. Truth-there are patients that have negative Covid tests-falsely-why because they had elevated inflammatory markers on admission. Huge cause for a false negative-clinically present with glass ground opacities in the lungs, and rapid onset of multi organ system failure. And, as you said-false negatives and false positives happen. In the case of my *** patient (Erin mentioned)-I can tell you more about that person than I can myself. Presented to the ED with shortness of breath and a cough. No underlying medical conditions. Now, take into consideration-this is the melting pot of the US-there are so many ethnicities and cultures here-healthcare is not free and they are underprivileged and don’t receive treatment when they should… was admitted to a Covid med surg floor ( tested positive) on a nasal canula, to venti mask to nonrebreather to eventually bipap. Was proning during this time. He was also receiving hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Guess what happened next-had a MI-prolonged QT. That’s what landed him on the ventilator with renal failure to follow. He had a dialysis catheter placed, an a-line, and a triple lumen central line. Why. Because those are needed tools in the ICU-that’s a critical care patient-Covid or not. I don’t know about you but I’m not infusing levophed, vasopressin, and neo through peripherals that need to be changed every 72 hours on someone with poor vascular access and terrible perfusion. A line for ABGS and blood draws to be able to wean or titrate the ventilator and replace electrolytes as needed, and review renal panels for preparation of HD. All of these lines and tubes and we still with help of an Air Force prone team were proning my patient!
Truth-Erin Marie is NOT a critical care nurse-she claims she is an ED nurse. She was taught how to inline suction, how to titrate drips, and how to open and insert the chamber into the epi syringe during a code(I’m pretty sure that must have been used in her ED career at some point). The night she videotaped and recorded my conversation and my patient was the night he passed. (Redacted for patient privacy)
Following the deaths of these three patients on that same night, CCU became a clean unit-there is no Covid or suspected Covid in the unit. Shoe covers are only worn in level 3 zones-not throughout the entire facility as she claims. What Erin doesn’t share is that the “dentist and ophthalmologist” working in the ICUs they have a defined role-they are the medical professionals that FaceTime family members at bedside. They are not treating! They are an extension of the nursing staff so we can provide more time caring for our patients and less time answering phone calls and talking to families…during this pandemic. What Erin doesn’t share is she was moved from night shift to dayshift on her own accord(it seems once she got what she wanted from her recordings) and shortly after terminated by Elmhurst and Krucial staffing for accusing a physician of murdering her patient.
To express the level of betrayal, hurt , doubt, pure disgust and anger is something I can not put into words. Working at a level one trauma center in a hurricane prevalent area, I came to Elmhurst to give the regular staff some reprieve-a fresh face-a strong skill set-and to answer my nursing oath. I thought others did too and man did this one nurse prove me wrong. We were welcomed with open arms and air hugs.
My heart hurts for the regular staff at Elmhurst-they are good nurses-they have good docs(and bad docs) but who doesn’t. But, the amount of mistrust, doubt, and fear that her video portrays to an otherwise already underprivileged city hospital-that’s not ok. All I keep thinking about are the families, the morale of the staff…there was no good to come from her video. It puts agency nurses in a terrible light-we already face obstacles of “oh you’re just a travel nurse” We aren’t all the same. Please feel free to share with the tribe-just keep it anonymous for me-The reputation is fractured. The morale is terrible. And it’s not fair for these nurses-most CCRN certified to always be portrayed in a negative light. And, it shows credibility that not all travel nurses are snakes.
From a pulmonary attending who cared for one of the patients mentioned:
I’m pulmonary/critical care in *** and volunteered through SCCM to go to NY as a pulmonary/critical care physician. I ended up at Elmhurst for a month and loved it. PCCM was needed so badly there; they got hammered and badly needed critical care docs. That’s an easier story to tell by voice than by the written word. Everyone there that I worked with, from the nurses to the docs, the residents and fellows, all worked really hard for the benefit of every patient. The residents got thrown into the lion’s mouth when the virus hit that hospital. It was really bad for them. The hospital ran out of ventilators and they had to decide who got ventilators (exame: choose between the older grandfather or the younger 40 year old with kids, etc.), which tore them up emotionally a lot. Many told me how they cried over what they saw and really had what I would describe as moral distress. Later the hospital got ventilators (less-than-ideal travel vents) but they needed staff. It was over a month later before Locums and volunteers started to arrive.
Anyway, I saw that Erin person around a few times but she was never the nurse on any of my patients. It turned out she was making inflammatory posts on social media which people picked up on.
She was an agency nurse with Krucial and was working nights. Apparently no one saw her social media posts, which were really inflammatory. She got busted when she had remained logged in for 12 hours outside of her assigned shift time gathering information. She got moved to days and then her social media posts were found by someone (her staffing agency?) and they pulled her from the “A4 unit” (normally a step down floor that was converted into an ICU) and sent her to the ER to work. Very shortly after that same day she was kicked out. The part in italics was told to me by a nurse from her agency.
A few days ago I saw Erin’s video and was as shocked by it and how misleading it was. The part that I can directly refute is her crying claim at the end of it where she says a resident incorrectly ambu-bagged her patidet suggesting it led to his death. Absolutely untrue.
Here is what really happened on the morning she was thrown out: I was rounding on A4 and they called a code a few doors down from where my team was. I walked over and started my assessment. The patient was morbidly obese and hypoxic and had weak pulse. We immediately disconnected the vent and tried to bag him to evaluate the airway, but there was no air movement; the bag could not squeeze. I tried to suction the trach and the suction catheter could not advanced through the trach, so I knew it was occluded or dislodged from the trachea. As we examined the patient quickly, it was immediately apparent that there was a ton of subcutaneous air on the chest (right > left), so I knew the trach got pushed out from the trachea. There was no way ay that time to find the trachea through the stoma. I was there with an ER doc who was acting as an intensivist on a different team. I intubated the gentleman and he did bilateral chest tubes, which confirmed tension pneumothorax. A CRNA came and I asked him to confirm tube placement, as the views were terrible considering the size of his neck and the capnometer was giving us equivocal readings. The CRNA used a glide scope and we decided to make sure the ETT was in place so he used a Bougie and then we put a 2nd tube over that and knew we were definitely in. We had already started CPR and marched through ACLS like military cadence. Unfortunately he never regained his pulse or blood pressure. I called it at 18 minutes, with the full agreement of the other attendings, including the patient’s medicine attending. Many were upset over the gentleman’s death as apparently he had been doing so well and was actually improving.
As to why he developed a spontaneous tension pneumothorax, I don’t know. The nurses were saying a resident was in the room beforehand adjusting the PEEP, but I spoke to the residents and then an attending who said he was making some ventilatory adjustments and never touched the PEEP. I told the nurses after the code what happened and that it looked like a spontaneous pneumothorax and the trach came out from the subcutaneous air. There was no resident “incorrectly ambu-bagging” the patient which led to his death.
That AM, the nurses had been sympathetic to Erin (clearly one had called her), but by later that day her social media posts had started making the rounds. As nurses read them, they were OUTRAGED at what she was stating and doing. Since then, many things that she posted on her Facebook have been deleted, but the reality is that someone in her agency and the hospital figured out she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and booted her out due to her social media posts and apparently her IT violations.
From an ICU nurse at Elmhurst:
I am a MICU/CCU nurse at Elmhurst Hospital. The way you spoke up for us literally made tears come out of my eyes. We were once called heroes now we are murderers. We are getting death threats and are told not to wear our scrubs for safety when coming to work. I worked with COVID19 patients since day 1, got sick, went thru emotional turmoil along with physical exhaustion. I will never forget how much we sweat with our googles fogged up, had headaches and a sore throat with wearing the N95 for more than 12 hours running room to room as the saturation levels went down to the 40’s.
So many of us got sick and to have someone who came to make up some story and twist it is so wrong. This nurse deserves her license revoked. She puts the profession of nursing to a shame. She claims her private institution in Florida had no deaths related to COVID. According to her facebook she is from Tampa Florida which falls under Hillsborough county which had 81 deaths. The total population of Tampa, Fl is 392,890 whereas the total population in Queens, NY is 2.73 million.
This so called holistic anti-vax , anti-chemo RN from the ED who claims to have all crossed trained nurses when in fact she was being taught how to suction patients on the vent has convinced certain people that COVID-19 did not even exist and the solution to COVID is sunshine, sea water, hydroxychloroquine and vitamin C.
There is no cure for COVID-19 as of yet. We tried the plasma, hydroxychloroquine remdesimvir and more which did not improve some of these patients’ conditions. We were physically tired where I had worked 14 1/2 hour shifts but the emotional turmoil this brought upon us cannot even be expressed in words. We had to open up 160 ICU beds.
I can not even imagine how the lies of this person affected those who are already grieving with the loss of their family members. We held a candle light vigil because we wanted to say a few words and have closure because of everyone who passed. So these are nurses and doctors who do care. People like Erin Marie Olszewski have no shame and do not care for anyone but themselves.
Thank you Dr. Z because the only people who seem to know she is lying at this time are healthcare professionals.
From a traveling nurse at Elmhurst:
As a travel nurse working at Elmhurst hospital I just wanted to thank you for your videos supporting those of us that work here. Have we done everything right? No, it’s an unknown disease and mistakes were made. I know for a fact that everyone here has worked their hardest and done everything possible to treat the patients here. I’ve seen the staff nurses get teary-eyed when they talk about the first few days of the pandemic. I’ve seen doctors and nurses work tirelessly to save patients and do all they can for them, sometimes even if nothing is left to be done but hold their hand. So, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for not letting the truth go unknown.
From an Elmhurst nurse:
I’m one of the nurses at Elmhurst who got to work with Erin Marie Olszewski in the ICUs when she was still there. This controversy has caused myself and my coworkers frustration, anxiety and just sadness at how we are being portrayed as villains in the media by a woman who clearly doesn’t even know half of what she’s talking about. Who came to Elmhurst with an agenda. I was able to work with her a couple of shifts. I had talked to her about some of the drips her patient was receiving and she didn’t seem to know much about why the medication was being given and probably even what the medication was – she just seemed clueless. That’s when it became evident to me that she did not have a lot of ICU experience. She admitted as much and said that she was an ED nurse but had some ICU experience a long time ago. In one instance, she had a patient in severe ARDS on a lot of sedation and a Nimbex drip who was breathing asynchronous with the vent and desaturating and the assessment that her patient might need more paralysis flew by her. Nobody belittled her or made her feel out of place because we knew that the ICUs needed help, that ICU nurses were in short supply, and that the hospital was full of ICU patients on otherwise non-ICU floors which made me guess that management must have been putting a mix of ICU and non ICU nurses throughout the whole hospital. She accuses us of misusing PPE, but I have observed her on many occasions going into and out of patient’s rooms without washing her hands or using alcohol-based sanitizers. She does not change out her gowns between patients, either. And so I find some of her virtue signaling as incredibly hypocritical. I’ve heard about the other incidences that she discusses on her video, but am unable to personally comment on them because I’ve not witnessed them directly. But her sweeping statements and ill-informed assumptions have seemed to gain a lot of traction and I am now afraid for my physical safety coming into and out of the hospital dressed as a healthcare worker.
Thank you for being a voice for the Elmhurst staff. I was told by some of my coworkers that our managers have come around and told the staff to be careful because we have already started receiving death threats. This is so distressing because we feel like we have fought so much, sacrificed so much, been through so much only to be maligned and made to look like murderers at the end of the day.
What Really Happened At Elmhurst Hospital
The real victims of misinformation spread by nurse Erin Marie Olszewski shared their stories.
zdoggmd.com
As someone who worked in those units and know the individuals and patients she referenced I can say without question that she spoke from a place of ignorance.
That she would use lazy and faulty conclusions based on superficial observations to assign motives to and assassinate the character of people who worked tirelessly is unconscionable. I know these residents and doctors, who paid emotional and physical (got sick w/ covid) toll trying their best.
Furthermore, I respect that she had concerns about patient care and applaud a system of accountability that would give her a voice to ask questions. THE PROBLEM IS SHE NEVER ASKED….. SHE JUST ASSUMED.
Had she have asked questions and had civil discussions with the medical team this is what they would have told her:
While it is true that some patients tested negative, those patients all had horrendously deranged inflammatory makers (with distributive shock on pressure) and chest x rays clearly demonstrating lung injury. In this case the responsible thing to do is to assume covid positive and give the available treatment. Speaking of which, all of these patients received an adjunctive anti inflammatory treatment consistent w CDC recs at the time so I’m not sure what her point regarding Plaquenil was.
This is because you’re likely dealing with a false Negative test because these patients were often unintentionally swabbed too superficially (i.e. didn’t get oropharynx because people testing don’t want to cause the patient discomfort and also limit their own exposure, which is understandable). This was a limitation of the test itself at the time. This also completely undermines the notion that these patients were inappropriately intubated for conditions like “anxiety”. There was clear evidence of
underlying organic disease processes and high flow O2 was often attempted prior to intubation when possible, but in addition to needing more respiratory support these patients also would develop encephalopathy and require intubation for airway protection.
She makes the mistake of comparing a limited experience w/ covid in Florida to a different population of patients (much sicker) in New York.
Each of her other arguments/points could be similarly refuted by anyone with first hand knowledge of the situation. You get the point.
This nurse may think she is helping in her own delusional way but effectively she is type-casting an entire community and hospital as inept, inadequate, and ignorant. I wonder if she would have made this video if she was working in the established hospitals across in Manhattan? I’ve worked shifts I’m both ICU’s during this crisis. While Elmhurst is a public hospital and as a result may lack some resources, I can tell you the medical decision making was consistent in both and outcomes were similar. These were simply sick patients. Inherent in her video is a bias and prejudice that is damaging in its own right.
Of course I was mad, but of this makes me sad more than anything. Sad for colleagues who were portrayed as inhuman/inept when they volunteered to do these shifts because they felt the call to duty (no hefty hazard pay required, like this nurse received). These same individuals shed tears over their patients, I’ve seen it, they just chose to do so privately, confiding only in their closest friends, rather than online. They also got sacrificed their bodies and got sick caring for their patients.
I’m sad that someone would hijack the struggle of an underserved community for the purpose of their own narrative, and in doing so stereotype them all in a damaging way.
But most of all, I’m thankful you took the time to stand up for them. They certainly appreciate it.
From a traveling nurse co-worker at Elmhurst:
First, as healthcare professionals we all can see through the misconception and ill perspective of the psycho that worked hand in hand next to me. Someone I thought was a friend, someone that was in the trenches of Elmhurst with me-I thought-for all the right reasons.
But, here is Erin Marie… Firstly, Covid rule outs WERE homed with Covid positive patients at the beginning of this pandemic-why- because the hospital was 80% OVER capacity. Imagine-we had 152 patients on ventilators when I walked through that door April 11th. We still have original Covid patients in the ICU units-some that were intubated at the end of March. They are now successfully trached, out of bed to chair, and undergoing pt/ot as they should be. Truth-there are patients that have negative Covid tests-falsely-why because they had elevated inflammatory markers on admission. Huge cause for a false negative-clinically present with glass ground opacities in the lungs, and rapid onset of multi organ system failure. And, as you said-false negatives and false positives happen. In the case of my *** patient (Erin mentioned)-I can tell you more about that person than I can myself. Presented to the ED with shortness of breath and a cough. No underlying medical conditions. Now, take into consideration-this is the melting pot of the US-there are so many ethnicities and cultures here-healthcare is not free and they are underprivileged and don’t receive treatment when they should… was admitted to a Covid med surg floor ( tested positive) on a nasal canula, to venti mask to nonrebreather to eventually bipap. Was proning during this time. He was also receiving hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Guess what happened next-had a MI-prolonged QT. That’s what landed him on the ventilator with renal failure to follow. He had a dialysis catheter placed, an a-line, and a triple lumen central line. Why. Because those are needed tools in the ICU-that’s a critical care patient-Covid or not. I don’t know about you but I’m not infusing levophed, vasopressin, and neo through peripherals that need to be changed every 72 hours on someone with poor vascular access and terrible perfusion. A line for ABGS and blood draws to be able to wean or titrate the ventilator and replace electrolytes as needed, and review renal panels for preparation of HD. All of these lines and tubes and we still with help of an Air Force prone team were proning my patient!
Truth-Erin Marie is NOT a critical care nurse-she claims she is an ED nurse. She was taught how to inline suction, how to titrate drips, and how to open and insert the chamber into the epi syringe during a code(I’m pretty sure that must have been used in her ED career at some point). The night she videotaped and recorded my conversation and my patient was the night he passed. (Redacted for patient privacy)
Following the deaths of these three patients on that same night, CCU became a clean unit-there is no Covid or suspected Covid in the unit. Shoe covers are only worn in level 3 zones-not throughout the entire facility as she claims. What Erin doesn’t share is that the “dentist and ophthalmologist” working in the ICUs they have a defined role-they are the medical professionals that FaceTime family members at bedside. They are not treating! They are an extension of the nursing staff so we can provide more time caring for our patients and less time answering phone calls and talking to families…during this pandemic. What Erin doesn’t share is she was moved from night shift to dayshift on her own accord(it seems once she got what she wanted from her recordings) and shortly after terminated by Elmhurst and Krucial staffing for accusing a physician of murdering her patient.
To express the level of betrayal, hurt , doubt, pure disgust and anger is something I can not put into words. Working at a level one trauma center in a hurricane prevalent area, I came to Elmhurst to give the regular staff some reprieve-a fresh face-a strong skill set-and to answer my nursing oath. I thought others did too and man did this one nurse prove me wrong. We were welcomed with open arms and air hugs.
My heart hurts for the regular staff at Elmhurst-they are good nurses-they have good docs(and bad docs) but who doesn’t. But, the amount of mistrust, doubt, and fear that her video portrays to an otherwise already underprivileged city hospital-that’s not ok. All I keep thinking about are the families, the morale of the staff…there was no good to come from her video. It puts agency nurses in a terrible light-we already face obstacles of “oh you’re just a travel nurse” We aren’t all the same. Please feel free to share with the tribe-just keep it anonymous for me-The reputation is fractured. The morale is terrible. And it’s not fair for these nurses-most CCRN certified to always be portrayed in a negative light. And, it shows credibility that not all travel nurses are snakes.
From a pulmonary attending who cared for one of the patients mentioned:
I’m pulmonary/critical care in *** and volunteered through SCCM to go to NY as a pulmonary/critical care physician. I ended up at Elmhurst for a month and loved it. PCCM was needed so badly there; they got hammered and badly needed critical care docs. That’s an easier story to tell by voice than by the written word. Everyone there that I worked with, from the nurses to the docs, the residents and fellows, all worked really hard for the benefit of every patient. The residents got thrown into the lion’s mouth when the virus hit that hospital. It was really bad for them. The hospital ran out of ventilators and they had to decide who got ventilators (exame: choose between the older grandfather or the younger 40 year old with kids, etc.), which tore them up emotionally a lot. Many told me how they cried over what they saw and really had what I would describe as moral distress. Later the hospital got ventilators (less-than-ideal travel vents) but they needed staff. It was over a month later before Locums and volunteers started to arrive.
Anyway, I saw that Erin person around a few times but she was never the nurse on any of my patients. It turned out she was making inflammatory posts on social media which people picked up on.
She was an agency nurse with Krucial and was working nights. Apparently no one saw her social media posts, which were really inflammatory. She got busted when she had remained logged in for 12 hours outside of her assigned shift time gathering information. She got moved to days and then her social media posts were found by someone (her staffing agency?) and they pulled her from the “A4 unit” (normally a step down floor that was converted into an ICU) and sent her to the ER to work. Very shortly after that same day she was kicked out. The part in italics was told to me by a nurse from her agency.
A few days ago I saw Erin’s video and was as shocked by it and how misleading it was. The part that I can directly refute is her crying claim at the end of it where she says a resident incorrectly ambu-bagged her patidet suggesting it led to his death. Absolutely untrue.
Here is what really happened on the morning she was thrown out: I was rounding on A4 and they called a code a few doors down from where my team was. I walked over and started my assessment. The patient was morbidly obese and hypoxic and had weak pulse. We immediately disconnected the vent and tried to bag him to evaluate the airway, but there was no air movement; the bag could not squeeze. I tried to suction the trach and the suction catheter could not advanced through the trach, so I knew it was occluded or dislodged from the trachea. As we examined the patient quickly, it was immediately apparent that there was a ton of subcutaneous air on the chest (right > left), so I knew the trach got pushed out from the trachea. There was no way ay that time to find the trachea through the stoma. I was there with an ER doc who was acting as an intensivist on a different team. I intubated the gentleman and he did bilateral chest tubes, which confirmed tension pneumothorax. A CRNA came and I asked him to confirm tube placement, as the views were terrible considering the size of his neck and the capnometer was giving us equivocal readings. The CRNA used a glide scope and we decided to make sure the ETT was in place so he used a Bougie and then we put a 2nd tube over that and knew we were definitely in. We had already started CPR and marched through ACLS like military cadence. Unfortunately he never regained his pulse or blood pressure. I called it at 18 minutes, with the full agreement of the other attendings, including the patient’s medicine attending. Many were upset over the gentleman’s death as apparently he had been doing so well and was actually improving.
As to why he developed a spontaneous tension pneumothorax, I don’t know. The nurses were saying a resident was in the room beforehand adjusting the PEEP, but I spoke to the residents and then an attending who said he was making some ventilatory adjustments and never touched the PEEP. I told the nurses after the code what happened and that it looked like a spontaneous pneumothorax and the trach came out from the subcutaneous air. There was no resident “incorrectly ambu-bagging” the patient which led to his death.
That AM, the nurses had been sympathetic to Erin (clearly one had called her), but by later that day her social media posts had started making the rounds. As nurses read them, they were OUTRAGED at what she was stating and doing. Since then, many things that she posted on her Facebook have been deleted, but the reality is that someone in her agency and the hospital figured out she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and booted her out due to her social media posts and apparently her IT violations.
From an ICU nurse at Elmhurst:
I am a MICU/CCU nurse at Elmhurst Hospital. The way you spoke up for us literally made tears come out of my eyes. We were once called heroes now we are murderers. We are getting death threats and are told not to wear our scrubs for safety when coming to work. I worked with COVID19 patients since day 1, got sick, went thru emotional turmoil along with physical exhaustion. I will never forget how much we sweat with our googles fogged up, had headaches and a sore throat with wearing the N95 for more than 12 hours running room to room as the saturation levels went down to the 40’s.
So many of us got sick and to have someone who came to make up some story and twist it is so wrong. This nurse deserves her license revoked. She puts the profession of nursing to a shame. She claims her private institution in Florida had no deaths related to COVID. According to her facebook she is from Tampa Florida which falls under Hillsborough county which had 81 deaths. The total population of Tampa, Fl is 392,890 whereas the total population in Queens, NY is 2.73 million.
This so called holistic anti-vax , anti-chemo RN from the ED who claims to have all crossed trained nurses when in fact she was being taught how to suction patients on the vent has convinced certain people that COVID-19 did not even exist and the solution to COVID is sunshine, sea water, hydroxychloroquine and vitamin C.
There is no cure for COVID-19 as of yet. We tried the plasma, hydroxychloroquine remdesimvir and more which did not improve some of these patients’ conditions. We were physically tired where I had worked 14 1/2 hour shifts but the emotional turmoil this brought upon us cannot even be expressed in words. We had to open up 160 ICU beds.
I can not even imagine how the lies of this person affected those who are already grieving with the loss of their family members. We held a candle light vigil because we wanted to say a few words and have closure because of everyone who passed. So these are nurses and doctors who do care. People like Erin Marie Olszewski have no shame and do not care for anyone but themselves.
Thank you Dr. Z because the only people who seem to know she is lying at this time are healthcare professionals.
From a traveling nurse at Elmhurst:
As a travel nurse working at Elmhurst hospital I just wanted to thank you for your videos supporting those of us that work here. Have we done everything right? No, it’s an unknown disease and mistakes were made. I know for a fact that everyone here has worked their hardest and done everything possible to treat the patients here. I’ve seen the staff nurses get teary-eyed when they talk about the first few days of the pandemic. I’ve seen doctors and nurses work tirelessly to save patients and do all they can for them, sometimes even if nothing is left to be done but hold their hand. So, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for not letting the truth go unknown.
From an Elmhurst nurse:
I’m one of the nurses at Elmhurst who got to work with Erin Marie Olszewski in the ICUs when she was still there. This controversy has caused myself and my coworkers frustration, anxiety and just sadness at how we are being portrayed as villains in the media by a woman who clearly doesn’t even know half of what she’s talking about. Who came to Elmhurst with an agenda. I was able to work with her a couple of shifts. I had talked to her about some of the drips her patient was receiving and she didn’t seem to know much about why the medication was being given and probably even what the medication was – she just seemed clueless. That’s when it became evident to me that she did not have a lot of ICU experience. She admitted as much and said that she was an ED nurse but had some ICU experience a long time ago. In one instance, she had a patient in severe ARDS on a lot of sedation and a Nimbex drip who was breathing asynchronous with the vent and desaturating and the assessment that her patient might need more paralysis flew by her. Nobody belittled her or made her feel out of place because we knew that the ICUs needed help, that ICU nurses were in short supply, and that the hospital was full of ICU patients on otherwise non-ICU floors which made me guess that management must have been putting a mix of ICU and non ICU nurses throughout the whole hospital. She accuses us of misusing PPE, but I have observed her on many occasions going into and out of patient’s rooms without washing her hands or using alcohol-based sanitizers. She does not change out her gowns between patients, either. And so I find some of her virtue signaling as incredibly hypocritical. I’ve heard about the other incidences that she discusses on her video, but am unable to personally comment on them because I’ve not witnessed them directly. But her sweeping statements and ill-informed assumptions have seemed to gain a lot of traction and I am now afraid for my physical safety coming into and out of the hospital dressed as a healthcare worker.
Thank you for being a voice for the Elmhurst staff. I was told by some of my coworkers that our managers have come around and told the staff to be careful because we have already started receiving death threats. This is so distressing because we feel like we have fought so much, sacrificed so much, been through so much only to be maligned and made to look like murderers at the end of the day.
Have you ever been in a hospital that royally fucked you up and then tried lying about it?Well, the other side of the story is that she is full of shit and not experienced in ICU care much less virology. Make up your own mind.
From a physician fellow at Elmhurst:What Really Happened At Elmhurst Hospital
The real victims of misinformation spread by nurse Erin Marie Olszewski shared their stories.
As someone who worked in those units and know the individuals and patients she referenced I can say without question that she spoke from a place of ignorance.
That she would use lazy and faulty conclusions based on superficial observations to assign motives to and assassinate the character of people who worked tirelessly is unconscionable. I know these residents and doctors, who paid emotional and physical (got sick w/ covid) toll trying their best.
Furthermore, I respect that she had concerns about patient care and applaud a system of accountability that would give her a voice to ask questions. THE PROBLEM IS SHE NEVER ASKED….. SHE JUST ASSUMED.
Had she have asked questions and had civil discussions with the medical team this is what they would have told her:
While it is true that some patients tested negative, those patients all had horrendously deranged inflammatory makers (with distributive shock on pressure) and chest x rays clearly demonstrating lung injury. In this case the responsible thing to do is to assume covid positive and give the available treatment. Speaking of which, all of these patients received an adjunctive anti inflammatory treatment consistent w CDC recs at the time so I’m not sure what her point regarding Plaquenil was.
This is because you’re likely dealing with a false Negative test because these patients were often unintentionally swabbed too superficially (i.e. didn’t get oropharynx because people testing don’t want to cause the patient discomfort and also limit their own exposure, which is understandable). This was a limitation of the test itself at the time. This also completely undermines the notion that these patients were inappropriately intubated for conditions like “anxiety”. There was clear evidence of
underlying organic disease processes and high flow O2 was often attempted prior to intubation when possible, but in addition to needing more respiratory support these patients also would develop encephalopathy and require intubation for airway protection.
She makes the mistake of comparing a limited experience w/ covid in Florida to a different population of patients (much sicker) in New York.
Each of her other arguments/points could be similarly refuted by anyone with first hand knowledge of the situation. You get the point.
This nurse may think she is helping in her own delusional way but effectively she is type-casting an entire community and hospital as inept, inadequate, and ignorant. I wonder if she would have made this video if she was working in the established hospitals across in Manhattan? I’ve worked shifts I’m both ICU’s during this crisis. While Elmhurst is a public hospital and as a result may lack some resources, I can tell you the medical decision making was consistent in both and outcomes were similar. These were simply sick patients. Inherent in her video is a bias and prejudice that is damaging in its own right.
Of course I was mad, but of this makes me sad more than anything. Sad for colleagues who were portrayed as inhuman/inept when they volunteered to do these shifts because they felt the call to duty (no hefty hazard pay required, like this nurse received). These same individuals shed tears over their patients, I’ve seen it, they just chose to do so privately, confiding only in their closest friends, rather than online. They also got sacrificed their bodies and got sick caring for their patients.
I’m sad that someone would hijack the struggle of an underserved community for the purpose of their own narrative, and in doing so stereotype them all in a damaging way.
But most of all, I’m thankful you took the time to stand up for them. They certainly appreciate it.
From a traveling nurse co-worker at Elmhurst:
First, as healthcare professionals we all can see through the misconception and ill perspective of the psycho that worked hand in hand next to me. Someone I thought was a friend, someone that was in the trenches of Elmhurst with me-I thought-for all the right reasons.
But, here is Erin Marie… Firstly, Covid rule outs WERE homed with Covid positive patients at the beginning of this pandemic-why- because the hospital was 80% OVER capacity. Imagine-we had 152 patients on ventilators when I walked through that door April 11th. We still have original Covid patients in the ICU units-some that were intubated at the end of March. They are now successfully trached, out of bed to chair, and undergoing pt/ot as they should be. Truth-there are patients that have negative Covid tests-falsely-why because they had elevated inflammatory markers on admission. Huge cause for a false negative-clinically present with glass ground opacities in the lungs, and rapid onset of multi organ system failure. And, as you said-false negatives and false positives happen. In the case of my *** patient (Erin mentioned)-I can tell you more about that person than I can myself. Presented to the ED with shortness of breath and a cough. No underlying medical conditions. Now, take into consideration-this is the melting pot of the US-there are so many ethnicities and cultures here-healthcare is not free and they are underprivileged and don’t receive treatment when they should… was admitted to a Covid med surg floor ( tested positive) on a nasal canula, to venti mask to nonrebreather to eventually bipap. Was proning during this time. He was also receiving hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Guess what happened next-had a MI-prolonged QT. That’s what landed him on the ventilator with renal failure to follow. He had a dialysis catheter placed, an a-line, and a triple lumen central line. Why. Because those are needed tools in the ICU-that’s a critical care patient-Covid or not. I don’t know about you but I’m not infusing levophed, vasopressin, and neo through peripherals that need to be changed every 72 hours on someone with poor vascular access and terrible perfusion. A line for ABGS and blood draws to be able to wean or titrate the ventilator and replace electrolytes as needed, and review renal panels for preparation of HD. All of these lines and tubes and we still with help of an Air Force prone team were proning my patient!
Truth-Erin Marie is NOT a critical care nurse-she claims she is an ED nurse. She was taught how to inline suction, how to titrate drips, and how to open and insert the chamber into the epi syringe during a code(I’m pretty sure that must have been used in her ED career at some point). The night she videotaped and recorded my conversation and my patient was the night he passed. (Redacted for patient privacy)
Following the deaths of these three patients on that same night, CCU became a clean unit-there is no Covid or suspected Covid in the unit. Shoe covers are only worn in level 3 zones-not throughout the entire facility as she claims. What Erin doesn’t share is that the “dentist and ophthalmologist” working in the ICUs they have a defined role-they are the medical professionals that FaceTime family members at bedside. They are not treating! They are an extension of the nursing staff so we can provide more time caring for our patients and less time answering phone calls and talking to families…during this pandemic. What Erin doesn’t share is she was moved from night shift to dayshift on her own accord(it seems once she got what she wanted from her recordings) and shortly after terminated by Elmhurst and Krucial staffing for accusing a physician of murdering her patient.
To express the level of betrayal, hurt , doubt, pure disgust and anger is something I can not put into words. Working at a level one trauma center in a hurricane prevalent area, I came to Elmhurst to give the regular staff some reprieve-a fresh face-a strong skill set-and to answer my nursing oath. I thought others did too and man did this one nurse prove me wrong. We were welcomed with open arms and air hugs.
My heart hurts for the regular staff at Elmhurst-they are good nurses-they have good docs(and bad docs) but who doesn’t. But, the amount of mistrust, doubt, and fear that her video portrays to an otherwise already underprivileged city hospital-that’s not ok. All I keep thinking about are the families, the morale of the staff…there was no good to come from her video. It puts agency nurses in a terrible light-we already face obstacles of “oh you’re just a travel nurse” We aren’t all the same. Please feel free to share with the tribe-just keep it anonymous for me-The reputation is fractured. The morale is terrible. And it’s not fair for these nurses-most CCRN certified to always be portrayed in a negative light. And, it shows credibility that not all travel nurses are snakes.
From a pulmonary attending who cared for one of the patients mentioned:
I’m pulmonary/critical care in *** and volunteered through SCCM to go to NY as a pulmonary/critical care physician. I ended up at Elmhurst for a month and loved it. PCCM was needed so badly there; they got hammered and badly needed critical care docs. That’s an easier story to tell by voice than by the written word. Everyone there that I worked with, from the nurses to the docs, the residents and fellows, all worked really hard for the benefit of every patient. The residents got thrown into the lion’s mouth when the virus hit that hospital. It was really bad for them. The hospital ran out of ventilators and they had to decide who got ventilators (exame: choose between the older grandfather or the younger 40 year old with kids, etc.), which tore them up emotionally a lot. Many told me how they cried over what they saw and really had what I would describe as moral distress. Later the hospital got ventilators (less-than-ideal travel vents) but they needed staff. It was over a month later before Locums and volunteers started to arrive.
Anyway, I saw that Erin person around a few times but she was never the nurse on any of my patients. It turned out she was making inflammatory posts on social media which people picked up on.
She was an agency nurse with Krucial and was working nights. Apparently no one saw her social media posts, which were really inflammatory. She got busted when she had remained logged in for 12 hours outside of her assigned shift time gathering information. She got moved to days and then her social media posts were found by someone (her staffing agency?) and they pulled her from the “A4 unit” (normally a step down floor that was converted into an ICU) and sent her to the ER to work. Very shortly after that same day she was kicked out. The part in italics was told to me by a nurse from her agency.
A few days ago I saw Erin’s video and was as shocked by it and how misleading it was. The part that I can directly refute is her crying claim at the end of it where she says a resident incorrectly ambu-bagged her patidet suggesting it led to his death. Absolutely untrue.
Here is what really happened on the morning she was thrown out: I was rounding on A4 and they called a code a few doors down from where my team was. I walked over and started my assessment. The patient was morbidly obese and hypoxic and had weak pulse. We immediately disconnected the vent and tried to bag him to evaluate the airway, but there was no air movement; the bag could not squeeze. I tried to suction the trach and the suction catheter could not advanced through the trach, so I knew it was occluded or dislodged from the trachea. As we examined the patient quickly, it was immediately apparent that there was a ton of subcutaneous air on the chest (right > left), so I knew the trach got pushed out from the trachea. There was no way ay that time to find the trachea through the stoma. I was there with an ER doc who was acting as an intensivist on a different team. I intubated the gentleman and he did bilateral chest tubes, which confirmed tension pneumothorax. A CRNA came and I asked him to confirm tube placement, as the views were terrible considering the size of his neck and the capnometer was giving us equivocal readings. The CRNA used a glide scope and we decided to make sure the ETT was in place so he used a Bougie and then we put a 2nd tube over that and knew we were definitely in. We had already started CPR and marched through ACLS like military cadence. Unfortunately he never regained his pulse or blood pressure. I called it at 18 minutes, with the full agreement of the other attendings, including the patient’s medicine attending. Many were upset over the gentleman’s death as apparently he had been doing so well and was actually improving.
As to why he developed a spontaneous tension pneumothorax, I don’t know. The nurses were saying a resident was in the room beforehand adjusting the PEEP, but I spoke to the residents and then an attending who said he was making some ventilatory adjustments and never touched the PEEP. I told the nurses after the code what happened and that it looked like a spontaneous pneumothorax and the trach came out from the subcutaneous air. There was no resident “incorrectly ambu-bagging” the patient which led to his death.
That AM, the nurses had been sympathetic to Erin (clearly one had called her), but by later that day her social media posts had started making the rounds. As nurses read them, they were OUTRAGED at what she was stating and doing. Since then, many things that she posted on her Facebook have been deleted, but the reality is that someone in her agency and the hospital figured out she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and booted her out due to her social media posts and apparently her IT violations.
From an ICU nurse at Elmhurst:
I am a MICU/CCU nurse at Elmhurst Hospital. The way you spoke up for us literally made tears come out of my eyes. We were once called heroes now we are murderers. We are getting death threats and are told not to wear our scrubs for safety when coming to work. I worked with COVID19 patients since day 1, got sick, went thru emotional turmoil along with physical exhaustion. I will never forget how much we sweat with our googles fogged up, had headaches and a sore throat with wearing the N95 for more than 12 hours running room to room as the saturation levels went down to the 40’s.
So many of us got sick and to have someone who came to make up some story and twist it is so wrong. This nurse deserves her license revoked. She puts the profession of nursing to a shame. She claims her private institution in Florida had no deaths related to COVID. According to her facebook she is from Tampa Florida which falls under Hillsborough county which had 81 deaths. The total population of Tampa, Fl is 392,890 whereas the total population in Queens, NY is 2.73 million.
This so called holistic anti-vax , anti-chemo RN from the ED who claims to have all crossed trained nurses when in fact she was being taught how to suction patients on the vent has convinced certain people that COVID-19 did not even exist and the solution to COVID is sunshine, sea water, hydroxychloroquine and vitamin C.
There is no cure for COVID-19 as of yet. We tried the plasma, hydroxychloroquine remdesimvir and more which did not improve some of these patients’ conditions. We were physically tired where I had worked 14 1/2 hour shifts but the emotional turmoil this brought upon us cannot even be expressed in words. We had to open up 160 ICU beds.
I can not even imagine how the lies of this person affected those who are already grieving with the loss of their family members. We held a candle light vigil because we wanted to say a few words and have closure because of everyone who passed. So these are nurses and doctors who do care. People like Erin Marie Olszewski have no shame and do not care for anyone but themselves.
Thank you Dr. Z because the only people who seem to know she is lying at this time are healthcare professionals.
From a traveling nurse at Elmhurst:
As a travel nurse working at Elmhurst hospital I just wanted to thank you for your videos supporting those of us that work here. Have we done everything right? No, it’s an unknown disease and mistakes were made. I know for a fact that everyone here has worked their hardest and done everything possible to treat the patients here. I’ve seen the staff nurses get teary-eyed when they talk about the first few days of the pandemic. I’ve seen doctors and nurses work tirelessly to save patients and do all they can for them, sometimes even if nothing is left to be done but hold their hand. So, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for not letting the truth go unknown.
From an Elmhurst nurse:
I’m one of the nurses at Elmhurst who got to work with Erin Marie Olszewski in the ICUs when she was still there. This controversy has caused myself and my coworkers frustration, anxiety and just sadness at how we are being portrayed as villains in the media by a woman who clearly doesn’t even know half of what she’s talking about. Who came to Elmhurst with an agenda. I was able to work with her a couple of shifts. I had talked to her about some of the drips her patient was receiving and she didn’t seem to know much about why the medication was being given and probably even what the medication was – she just seemed clueless. That’s when it became evident to me that she did not have a lot of ICU experience. She admitted as much and said that she was an ED nurse but had some ICU experience a long time ago. In one instance, she had a patient in severe ARDS on a lot of sedation and a Nimbex drip who was breathing asynchronous with the vent and desaturating and the assessment that her patient might need more paralysis flew by her. Nobody belittled her or made her feel out of place because we knew that the ICUs needed help, that ICU nurses were in short supply, and that the hospital was full of ICU patients on otherwise non-ICU floors which made me guess that management must have been putting a mix of ICU and non ICU nurses throughout the whole hospital. She accuses us of misusing PPE, but I have observed her on many occasions going into and out of patient’s rooms without washing her hands or using alcohol-based sanitizers. She does not change out her gowns between patients, either. And so I find some of her virtue signaling as incredibly hypocritical. I’ve heard about the other incidences that she discusses on her video, but am unable to personally comment on them because I’ve not witnessed them directly. But her sweeping statements and ill-informed assumptions have seemed to gain a lot of traction and I am now afraid for my physical safety coming into and out of the hospital dressed as a healthcare worker.
Thank you for being a voice for the Elmhurst staff. I was told by some of my coworkers that our managers have come around and told the staff to be careful because we have already started receiving death threats. This is so distressing because we feel like we have fought so much, sacrificed so much, been through so much only to be maligned and made to look like murderers at the end of the day.
My wife has worked as a BSRN for 29 years.
She could tell you stories about how they try to discredit anyone who talks about the downright ugliness that occurs daily.
She was called twice to testify against the hospital by telling the truth
When you tell te truth in a situation like that you are a minority,yeah everyone talks about it but doesn't have the balls to do it.
I know someone that went to NYC to help and she's ready to get out. She was eager to help sick people and is now disgusted with what is going on there. This is someone making over $5K per week. She says that the money is not worth it.
And to think I heard Cuomo a few weeks ago say,"They were going to die anyway " while addressing the nursing home bullshit.
That motherfucker needs his nuts smashed.
I can't imagine what having your parents sent off to die would be like
That motherfucker needs his nuts smashed.
I can't imagine what having your parents sent off to die would be like
"While it is true that some patients tested negative, those patients all had horrendously deranged inflammatory makers (with distributive shock on pressure) and chest x rays clearly demonstrating lung injury. In this case the responsible thing to do is to assume covid positive and give the available treatment. Speaking of which, all of these patients received an adjunctive anti inflammatory treatment consistent w CDC recs at the time so I’m not sure what her point regarding Plaquenil was."
Ever read something and a certain word or phrase just jumps out and makes you stop? If you ever hear a doctor use that word, walk the fuck away. Assume? Why don't you just "assume" I have cancer and start giving me chemo?
Ever read something and a certain word or phrase just jumps out and makes you stop? If you ever hear a doctor use that word, walk the fuck away. Assume? Why don't you just "assume" I have cancer and start giving me chemo?
Considering he made the statement that "her problem is ......she never asked. She just assumed."
The other statement that she came from Florida to NYC where people are "much sicker". I bet there's a medical term for that. Or is he saying that the virus is different in NYC than Florida? Or possibly he's saying that because she's from Florida she lacks the intelligence of those in NYC?
They assume people have a bacterial infection and start them on antibiotics. They assume people have the same thing going around, and start treatment for that, while waiting for a test. There are many levels of assume. Assuming from an educated position on a subject is better than a wild ass guess.
Well, the other side of the story is that she is full of shit and not experienced in ICU care much less virology. Make up your own mind.
From a physician fellow at Elmhurst:What Really Happened At Elmhurst Hospital
The real victims of misinformation spread by nurse Erin Marie Olszewski shared their stories.
As someone who worked in those units and know the individuals and patients she referenced I can say without question that she spoke from a place of ignorance.
That she would use lazy and faulty conclusions based on superficial observations to assign motives to and assassinate the character of people who worked tirelessly is unconscionable. I know these residents and doctors, who paid emotional and physical (got sick w/ covid) toll trying their best.
Furthermore, I respect that she had concerns about patient care and applaud a system of accountability that would give her a voice to ask questions. THE PROBLEM IS SHE NEVER ASKED….. SHE JUST ASSUMED.
Had she have asked questions and had civil discussions with the medical team this is what they would have told her:
While it is true that some patients tested negative, those patients all had horrendously deranged inflammatory makers (with distributive shock on pressure) and chest x rays clearly demonstrating lung injury. In this case the responsible thing to do is to assume covid positive and give the available treatment. Speaking of which, all of these patients received an adjunctive anti inflammatory treatment consistent w CDC recs at the time so I’m not sure what her point regarding Plaquenil was.
This is because you’re likely dealing with a false Negative test because these patients were often unintentionally swabbed too superficially (i.e. didn’t get oropharynx because people testing don’t want to cause the patient discomfort and also limit their own exposure, which is understandable). This was a limitation of the test itself at the time. This also completely undermines the notion that these patients were inappropriately intubated for conditions like “anxiety”. There was clear evidence of
underlying organic disease processes and high flow O2 was often attempted prior to intubation when possible, but in addition to needing more respiratory support these patients also would develop encephalopathy and require intubation for airway protection.
She makes the mistake of comparing a limited experience w/ covid in Florida to a different population of patients (much sicker) in New York.
Each of her other arguments/points could be similarly refuted by anyone with first hand knowledge of the situation. You get the point.
This nurse may think she is helping in her own delusional way but effectively she is type-casting an entire community and hospital as inept, inadequate, and ignorant. I wonder if she would have made this video if she was working in the established hospitals across in Manhattan? I’ve worked shifts I’m both ICU’s during this crisis. While Elmhurst is a public hospital and as a result may lack some resources, I can tell you the medical decision making was consistent in both and outcomes were similar. These were simply sick patients. Inherent in her video is a bias and prejudice that is damaging in its own right.
Of course I was mad, but of this makes me sad more than anything. Sad for colleagues who were portrayed as inhuman/inept when they volunteered to do these shifts because they felt the call to duty (no hefty hazard pay required, like this nurse received). These same individuals shed tears over their patients, I’ve seen it, they just chose to do so privately, confiding only in their closest friends, rather than online. They also got sacrificed their bodies and got sick caring for their patients.
I’m sad that someone would hijack the struggle of an underserved community for the purpose of their own narrative, and in doing so stereotype them all in a damaging way.
But most of all, I’m thankful you took the time to stand up for them. They certainly appreciate it.
From a traveling nurse co-worker at Elmhurst:
First, as healthcare professionals we all can see through the misconception and ill perspective of the psycho that worked hand in hand next to me. Someone I thought was a friend, someone that was in the trenches of Elmhurst with me-I thought-for all the right reasons.
But, here is Erin Marie… Firstly, Covid rule outs WERE homed with Covid positive patients at the beginning of this pandemic-why- because the hospital was 80% OVER capacity. Imagine-we had 152 patients on ventilators when I walked through that door April 11th. We still have original Covid patients in the ICU units-some that were intubated at the end of March. They are now successfully trached, out of bed to chair, and undergoing pt/ot as they should be. Truth-there are patients that have negative Covid tests-falsely-why because they had elevated inflammatory markers on admission. Huge cause for a false negative-clinically present with glass ground opacities in the lungs, and rapid onset of multi organ system failure. And, as you said-false negatives and false positives happen. In the case of my *** patient (Erin mentioned)-I can tell you more about that person than I can myself. Presented to the ED with shortness of breath and a cough. No underlying medical conditions. Now, take into consideration-this is the melting pot of the US-there are so many ethnicities and cultures here-healthcare is not free and they are underprivileged and don’t receive treatment when they should… was admitted to a Covid med surg floor ( tested positive) on a nasal canula, to venti mask to nonrebreather to eventually bipap. Was proning during this time. He was also receiving hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Guess what happened next-had a MI-prolonged QT. That’s what landed him on the ventilator with renal failure to follow. He had a dialysis catheter placed, an a-line, and a triple lumen central line. Why. Because those are needed tools in the ICU-that’s a critical care patient-Covid or not. I don’t know about you but I’m not infusing levophed, vasopressin, and neo through peripherals that need to be changed every 72 hours on someone with poor vascular access and terrible perfusion. A line for ABGS and blood draws to be able to wean or titrate the ventilator and replace electrolytes as needed, and review renal panels for preparation of HD. All of these lines and tubes and we still with help of an Air Force prone team were proning my patient!
Truth-Erin Marie is NOT a critical care nurse-she claims she is an ED nurse. She was taught how to inline suction, how to titrate drips, and how to open and insert the chamber into the epi syringe during a code(I’m pretty sure that must have been used in her ED career at some point). The night she videotaped and recorded my conversation and my patient was the night he passed. (Redacted for patient privacy)
Following the deaths of these three patients on that same night, CCU became a clean unit-there is no Covid or suspected Covid in the unit. Shoe covers are only worn in level 3 zones-not throughout the entire facility as she claims. What Erin doesn’t share is that the “dentist and ophthalmologist” working in the ICUs they have a defined role-they are the medical professionals that FaceTime family members at bedside. They are not treating! They are an extension of the nursing staff so we can provide more time caring for our patients and less time answering phone calls and talking to families…during this pandemic. What Erin doesn’t share is she was moved from night shift to dayshift on her own accord(it seems once she got what she wanted from her recordings) and shortly after terminated by Elmhurst and Krucial staffing for accusing a physician of murdering her patient.
To express the level of betrayal, hurt , doubt, pure disgust and anger is something I can not put into words. Working at a level one trauma center in a hurricane prevalent area, I came to Elmhurst to give the regular staff some reprieve-a fresh face-a strong skill set-and to answer my nursing oath. I thought others did too and man did this one nurse prove me wrong. We were welcomed with open arms and air hugs.
My heart hurts for the regular staff at Elmhurst-they are good nurses-they have good docs(and bad docs) but who doesn’t. But, the amount of mistrust, doubt, and fear that her video portrays to an otherwise already underprivileged city hospital-that’s not ok. All I keep thinking about are the families, the morale of the staff…there was no good to come from her video. It puts agency nurses in a terrible light-we already face obstacles of “oh you’re just a travel nurse” We aren’t all the same. Please feel free to share with the tribe-just keep it anonymous for me-The reputation is fractured. The morale is terrible. And it’s not fair for these nurses-most CCRN certified to always be portrayed in a negative light. And, it shows credibility that not all travel nurses are snakes.
From a pulmonary attending who cared for one of the patients mentioned:
I’m pulmonary/critical care in *** and volunteered through SCCM to go to NY as a pulmonary/critical care physician. I ended up at Elmhurst for a month and loved it. PCCM was needed so badly there; they got hammered and badly needed critical care docs. That’s an easier story to tell by voice than by the written word. Everyone there that I worked with, from the nurses to the docs, the residents and fellows, all worked really hard for the benefit of every patient. The residents got thrown into the lion’s mouth when the virus hit that hospital. It was really bad for them. The hospital ran out of ventilators and they had to decide who got ventilators (exame: choose between the older grandfather or the younger 40 year old with kids, etc.), which tore them up emotionally a lot. Many told me how they cried over what they saw and really had what I would describe as moral distress. Later the hospital got ventilators (less-than-ideal travel vents) but they needed staff. It was over a month later before Locums and volunteers started to arrive.
Anyway, I saw that Erin person around a few times but she was never the nurse on any of my patients. It turned out she was making inflammatory posts on social media which people picked up on.
She was an agency nurse with Krucial and was working nights. Apparently no one saw her social media posts, which were really inflammatory. She got busted when she had remained logged in for 12 hours outside of her assigned shift time gathering information. She got moved to days and then her social media posts were found by someone (her staffing agency?) and they pulled her from the “A4 unit” (normally a step down floor that was converted into an ICU) and sent her to the ER to work. Very shortly after that same day she was kicked out. The part in italics was told to me by a nurse from her agency.
A few days ago I saw Erin’s video and was as shocked by it and how misleading it was. The part that I can directly refute is her crying claim at the end of it where she says a resident incorrectly ambu-bagged her patidet suggesting it led to his death. Absolutely untrue.
Here is what really happened on the morning she was thrown out: I was rounding on A4 and they called a code a few doors down from where my team was. I walked over and started my assessment. The patient was morbidly obese and hypoxic and had weak pulse. We immediately disconnected the vent and tried to bag him to evaluate the airway, but there was no air movement; the bag could not squeeze. I tried to suction the trach and the suction catheter could not advanced through the trach, so I knew it was occluded or dislodged from the trachea. As we examined the patient quickly, it was immediately apparent that there was a ton of subcutaneous air on the chest (right > left), so I knew the trach got pushed out from the trachea. There was no way ay that time to find the trachea through the stoma. I was there with an ER doc who was acting as an intensivist on a different team. I intubated the gentleman and he did bilateral chest tubes, which confirmed tension pneumothorax. A CRNA came and I asked him to confirm tube placement, as the views were terrible considering the size of his neck and the capnometer was giving us equivocal readings. The CRNA used a glide scope and we decided to make sure the ETT was in place so he used a Bougie and then we put a 2nd tube over that and knew we were definitely in. We had already started CPR and marched through ACLS like military cadence. Unfortunately he never regained his pulse or blood pressure. I called it at 18 minutes, with the full agreement of the other attendings, including the patient’s medicine attending. Many were upset over the gentleman’s death as apparently he had been doing so well and was actually improving.
As to why he developed a spontaneous tension pneumothorax, I don’t know. The nurses were saying a resident was in the room beforehand adjusting the PEEP, but I spoke to the residents and then an attending who said he was making some ventilatory adjustments and never touched the PEEP. I told the nurses after the code what happened and that it looked like a spontaneous pneumothorax and the trach came out from the subcutaneous air. There was no resident “incorrectly ambu-bagging” the patient which led to his death.
That AM, the nurses had been sympathetic to Erin (clearly one had called her), but by later that day her social media posts had started making the rounds. As nurses read them, they were OUTRAGED at what she was stating and doing. Since then, many things that she posted on her Facebook have been deleted, but the reality is that someone in her agency and the hospital figured out she was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and booted her out due to her social media posts and apparently her IT violations.
From an ICU nurse at Elmhurst:
I am a MICU/CCU nurse at Elmhurst Hospital. The way you spoke up for us literally made tears come out of my eyes. We were once called heroes now we are murderers. We are getting death threats and are told not to wear our scrubs for safety when coming to work. I worked with COVID19 patients since day 1, got sick, went thru emotional turmoil along with physical exhaustion. I will never forget how much we sweat with our googles fogged up, had headaches and a sore throat with wearing the N95 for more than 12 hours running room to room as the saturation levels went down to the 40’s.
So many of us got sick and to have someone who came to make up some story and twist it is so wrong. This nurse deserves her license revoked. She puts the profession of nursing to a shame. She claims her private institution in Florida had no deaths related to COVID. According to her facebook she is from Tampa Florida which falls under Hillsborough county which had 81 deaths. The total population of Tampa, Fl is 392,890 whereas the total population in Queens, NY is 2.73 million.
This so called holistic anti-vax , anti-chemo RN from the ED who claims to have all crossed trained nurses when in fact she was being taught how to suction patients on the vent has convinced certain people that COVID-19 did not even exist and the solution to COVID is sunshine, sea water, hydroxychloroquine and vitamin C.
There is no cure for COVID-19 as of yet. We tried the plasma, hydroxychloroquine remdesimvir and more which did not improve some of these patients’ conditions. We were physically tired where I had worked 14 1/2 hour shifts but the emotional turmoil this brought upon us cannot even be expressed in words. We had to open up 160 ICU beds.
I can not even imagine how the lies of this person affected those who are already grieving with the loss of their family members. We held a candle light vigil because we wanted to say a few words and have closure because of everyone who passed. So these are nurses and doctors who do care. People like Erin Marie Olszewski have no shame and do not care for anyone but themselves.
Thank you Dr. Z because the only people who seem to know she is lying at this time are healthcare professionals.
From a traveling nurse at Elmhurst:
As a travel nurse working at Elmhurst hospital I just wanted to thank you for your videos supporting those of us that work here. Have we done everything right? No, it’s an unknown disease and mistakes were made. I know for a fact that everyone here has worked their hardest and done everything possible to treat the patients here. I’ve seen the staff nurses get teary-eyed when they talk about the first few days of the pandemic. I’ve seen doctors and nurses work tirelessly to save patients and do all they can for them, sometimes even if nothing is left to be done but hold their hand. So, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for not letting the truth go unknown.
From an Elmhurst nurse:
I’m one of the nurses at Elmhurst who got to work with Erin Marie Olszewski in the ICUs when she was still there. This controversy has caused myself and my coworkers frustration, anxiety and just sadness at how we are being portrayed as villains in the media by a woman who clearly doesn’t even know half of what she’s talking about. Who came to Elmhurst with an agenda. I was able to work with her a couple of shifts. I had talked to her about some of the drips her patient was receiving and she didn’t seem to know much about why the medication was being given and probably even what the medication was – she just seemed clueless. That’s when it became evident to me that she did not have a lot of ICU experience. She admitted as much and said that she was an ED nurse but had some ICU experience a long time ago. In one instance, she had a patient in severe ARDS on a lot of sedation and a Nimbex drip who was breathing asynchronous with the vent and desaturating and the assessment that her patient might need more paralysis flew by her. Nobody belittled her or made her feel out of place because we knew that the ICUs needed help, that ICU nurses were in short supply, and that the hospital was full of ICU patients on otherwise non-ICU floors which made me guess that management must have been putting a mix of ICU and non ICU nurses throughout the whole hospital. She accuses us of misusing PPE, but I have observed her on many occasions going into and out of patient’s rooms without washing her hands or using alcohol-based sanitizers. She does not change out her gowns between patients, either. And so I find some of her virtue signaling as incredibly hypocritical. I’ve heard about the other incidences that she discusses on her video, but am unable to personally comment on them because I’ve not witnessed them directly. But her sweeping statements and ill-informed assumptions have seemed to gain a lot of traction and I am now afraid for my physical safety coming into and out of the hospital dressed as a healthcare worker.
Thank you for being a voice for the Elmhurst staff. I was told by some of my coworkers that our managers have come around and told the staff to be careful because we have already started receiving death threats. This is so distressing because we feel like we have fought so much, sacrificed so much, been through so much only to be maligned and made to look like murderers at the end of the day.
I am stricken, that there is only one person who has put their name behind the claims being made. If these paragraphs want to riotously refute what another person wrote, and put her name on. I want the names of the people who wrote them. Not a list un claimed opinions.
thank you.
anyone that had been to Martin Luther King Jr Hospital - Harbor, aka "Killer King", probably knows what Elmhurst is like.
of course, that would have been before it was forced to close.
one can compare these hospitals to the schools in the area that graduate <25% of the kids that attend them.
I kind of have to wonder about people that try to defend it.
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lol, the incompetent or corrupt staff at elmhurst are anonymously defending their murders?Well, the other side of the story is that she is full of shit and not experienced in ICU care much less virology. Make up your own mind.
What Really Happened At Elmhurst Hospital
The real victims of misinformation spread by nurse Erin Marie Olszewski shared their stories.
completely unexpected.
All it will take, is the family members of one of the deceased individuals to start taking matters into their own hands, and things WILL change quickly.
The reason why our country is fucked up as it is, is because nobody had decided to raise the black flag yet. However, once somebody does, there will be no going back. The Democrats seemed to be trying their damndest to kick off a boogaloo in the recent weeks. However, I think that the boogaloo that they will receive, will be one that they least desire.
There is A LOT of anger simmering here in this area regarding this whole clusterfuck. And the really, really dangerous people, the ones who are capable of getting shit done, also happen to be the ones who tend to suppress their anger and despair and suffer in silence. All of those "protestors" and ANTIFA LARP'ers who are playing soldier with their cheap Barska scopes, they ain't shit. Old Chinese saying: A cat that can catch rats, do not make a sound. The Democrat establishment really, and I mean REALLY, will not want to break the last straw over those who are silent. They really will not want to...
The death of truth is more dangerous to us than the virus. The truth is out there somewhere but how can you find it? The BS is so thick it has become almost impossible to navigate through it. Once COVID became political, it became deadly. We are at war and as always truth was the first casualty.
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