Coronavirus Latest: South Jersey Nurse Says She Was Fired From Hospital For Wearing Own PPE
VOORHEES, N.J. (CBS) -- A former Virtua Health nurse in South Jersey is sharing her story after she says she was fired for wearing her own personal protective equipment from home. She wants the community to know what they can't see behind the scenes.
Dawn Kulach is a mother of a 10-year-old son as well as a registered nurse. She was an employee of Virtua Voorhees Hospital but after coming down with pneumonia, she was sent home to self-quarantine.
On March 31, she returned to work with her own N95 mask and surgical mask to fight in the battle against COVID-19.
"When I arrived on the unit, I was given a white surgical mask and it was quite possibly the thinnest surgical mask I had ever seen. It was probably comparable to tissue paper and I was told that that mask would be my mask for the entire day," Kulach said.
Kulach says, instead of using the mask that was given to her, she wore her N95 mask from home and put her other surgical mask from home on top of it, as well as the gloves she brought from her house.
That's when Kulach says her floor manager told her to take off her PPE.
"I refused, I told her that I didn't feel comfortable, especially where the virus wasn't contained on the unit. And she said that she would have to speak with my immediate supervisor and I said that was fine but I'm still not taking it off," Kulach said.
Later that day, Kulach was reprimanded by her supervisor.
"I promised my son that I would protect myself and him and I'd like to keep the mask on and she told me she strongly advises me that I look into a different career choice. Then she told me to clock out and go home," Kulach said.
On April 9, Kulach had a meeting with her union and Virtua Health leadership. She says, during that meeting, she was told she could bring her own mask from home but would not be able to bring her gloves or wear gloves provided by the hospital in shared work stations on COVID-19 floors.
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Kulach also claims Virtua Health is not providing health care workers with N95 masks.
At the end of the meeting, she was left with two options: either resign or be terminated. She would not resign so she was fired.
"If these hospitals don't adequately protect us, we are going to be harming other people by spreading this virus," she said.
Virtua Health sent CBS a statement.
"Virtua does not comment on personnel matters. We are happy, however, to provide you with context to our PPE practices. As a healthcare organization with a huge responsibility before us, we are doing our absolute best to respond to the anxiousness of our frontline teams through empathy and by being very transparent with our colleagues about the measures we are taking to protect them. Keeping our frontline health care workers safe is always our top priority.
"Virtua Health's clinical and infectious diseases experts have developed specific protocols based on CDC guidelines for the safe and appropriate use of PPE during COVID-19. In some cases, we have gone above and beyond CDC guidelines.
"As flexible as we have tried to be, we do have to draw the line when individuals say that they won't follow our safety policies -- such disregard puts all of us at risk. In this pandemic, it is more important than ever that we work together and follow the same playbook."
Kulach says she still wants to help in the fight against COVID-19 and hopes to be employed again soon.
