Nurses at Sandilands Rehabilitation Centre called in sick on Thursday in protest of management’s poor handling of COVID-19 cases at the facility in eastern New Providence and the unfair treatment of nurses.
Nurses working on 17 wards did not show up for work today, sending management scrambling to find people to work.
Nurses were scheduled to report to work at 8am on Thursday but called in sick.
Earlier this month, 23 SRC patients on the male ward tested positive for the coronavirus. According to the Public Hospitals Authority, they were infected after an employee who worked on three wards tested positive.
Six positive patients displayed symptoms of the virus while the other 17 patients were asymptomatic.
“Nurses are fed up and are tired of being mistreated. They are not being treated fairly,” according to an employee who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Nurses say the “straw that broke the camel’s back” was an incident involving a male Filipino nurse.
“One of the Filipino nurses, he came down with COVID. He called Employee Health and asked for his results. Apparently he had gotten swabbed.”
“He got sick, he had shortness of breath, diarrhea, vomiting and he got so weak. He called the COVID hotline.”
“In half an hour they returned a call to him and it turns out he was positive,” said the SRC employee.
“He called an ambulance to come and pick him up. The ambulance took about three hours. They took him to Accident and Emergency. The doctor told them not to take him out of the ambulance and to take him back home.”
Nurses are upset over how their colleague was treated.
“This is enough. The nurses are being mistreated and not being able to be seen to get the medical attention.”
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