Hospitals to doctors and nurses: Shut up about equipment shortages or you’re fired

Hospital staff have been frantically trying to get the word out: They are slammed with COVID-19 patients and they don’t have enough personal protective equipment to handle all the patients safely. But in some cases the effort to let the public know the severity of the situation is running up against hospital administrators who want to muzzle front-line healthcare workers, Bloomberg reports.

An emergency room doctor in Washington state was fired after doing a newspaper interview about inadequate protective gear and testing. NYU Langone Health has told workers that talking to the media without permission could cost them their jobs. And in Chicago, a nurse was fired for emailing her colleagues—not even the media—about wanting better protective gear.