Jhonna Porter felt a duty to alert her co-workers to a potentially dangerous change on the fifth floor of Los Angeles’ West Hills Hospital. Without much notice, the administration had begun converting the floor into a COVID-19 unit on March 20.
“The rumors are true,” Porter, a registered nurse, wrote that evening in a private Facebook group used by the floor’s staff. “Be careful.”
Porter, whose department usually works with cardiac patients, didn’t think the hospital was providing staff on the newly converted floor with adequate personal protection equipment. She posted a plea for donations on her personal Facebook page on March 24.
“I’m physically ill from the mental stress,” it read. “I need anything I can get.”
Within hours of posting that, the hospital administration called Porter in for a meeting. A West Hills attorney slid a printout of her March 20 warning to the private Facebook group across the table and accused her of violating patient privacy laws.
Porter was suspended without pay while West Hills investigated.
I’m physically ill from the mental stress. I need anything I can get.
Jhonna Porter, registered nurse
But the move mostly backfired. Suspending a nurse in the middle of a pandemic proved to be a public relations nightmare that sparked outrage and quickly escalated into a national news story. After 10 days, West Hills reinstated Porter and another nurse who had been suspended for a similar issue.
But the hospital had delivered its message, Porter said.
“It’s a PR thing,” she told HuffPost. “I think they’re trying to shut us up, and it worked.”
The West Hills controversy is hardly an isolated incident. Across the country, hospitals have threatened to discipline front-line health care workers who post on social media or speak with reporters about PPE shortages and dire working conditions.
Meanwhile, the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that over 9,000 health care workers have been infected with the coronavirus, though the CDC says the true number is likely much higher because occupational data is only available for about 16% of cases.
Hospital administrators often claim they are acting to protect patient privacy rights under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, and stem the spread of misinformation. But health care workers say speaking up is their best hope for pressuring decision-makers who can make changes to improve hospital conditions and save lives.
“I was hoping by using social media we can pressure hospitals to be honest and show commitment to its employees and the community,” Washington state physician Ming Lin wrote on Facebook in late March after he was fired for posting on social media about his hospital’s working conditions.
Porter and Lin’s posts led to a crowdsourcing campaign and equipment donations, though the administrations prohibited staff from using the gear because they say workers aren’t trained to use equipment not issued by the hospitals. Other health care workers hope their challenges can serve as warnings to those in hospitals the pandemic has not yet hit.
“It’s important for healthcare workers to tell their experience and stories so others can learn from it,” said Teena Chopra, an epidemiologist at Detroit’s Sinai-Grace Hospital who has regularly spoken with the media during the outbreak. “There’s nothing wrong with telling the truth to the world, as long as the information is accurate and it’s scientifically sound