MD in an American hospital here. New account for obvious reasons.

I was disciplined for bringing in a reusable respirator. The reason given was that it made other staff believe the health system wasn't doing enough to protect employees and creating extra fear. And yes, I was threatened with termination in the middle of this crisis.

Whatever the rationale, how they communicated and dealt with you is were things stink.

It needs to be addressed or it will repeat in some other context. Right thing to do is get cool heads in mgmt to handle the hot heads in mgmt. Small changes in comms can prevents such distracting/harmful escalations. And experienced managers/admins will know how to make it happen.

My guess: litigation risk, and institutional fear of any kind of potential lawsuits.

I think I remember someone who was a new-ish doctor mentioning that part of the reason some doctors' salaries were so high was they had to basically pour money into malpractice insurance.

Don't really know but my guess is that it is a combination of:

1. Regulations against using non-approved medical equipment of unknown provenance. 2. A worry about health care workers who don't have stuff they can bring from home. It's not as if you can go about and buy an N95 mask right now. If some of the healthcare workers have respirators that they have lying around at home and some don't then it could cause friction on the unit.

This comment is not directed towards you as much as the hospitals

1. All regulations are pretty far out the window at this point, nurses are already reusing single-use items all over the place.

2. Oh so since we can't protect everyone we can't protect anyone?

I agree in general, especially on point 1. If it's just an issue of regulations then that is insane.

On the second point I would actually be more sympathetic to their position (though probably not enough to actually ban employees from doing it). Humans are funny and if some people on a unit have better equipment than others it can certainly cause some interpersonal tension that over-stressed hospitals can't deal with right now.

It would be a different story if hospitals were upfront and honest. They are currently being neither.

They should be protecting the people who can actually help save other people even if they can't protect everyone. Should nurses in KY stop wearing masks because nurses in NY are out? I understand you point on "interpersonal tension" but people need to get over it right now and protect themselves in whatever way possible even if that means I walk into a hospital and see a nurse with a bandana over their face (already happening in some hospitals AND part of the CDC "Strategies for Optimizing the Supply of Facemasks" [0] -- Read the "HCP use of homemade masks" section)

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/ppe-strategy/f...

I think officially it is that they don't know what the employees are bringing from home. They could be bringing some knockoff mask that offers very little protection. But come on, you can't use a mask with 3M stamped on it that you bought at Home Depot?

I'll also speculate that it could create friction between staff - How come you get protect and I don't? It could be a problem.

If you allow it, then it could also be seen as a tacit acknowledgement that n95 masks are really the proper equipment. Logical, in a terrible way.

that's not it. it's because other staff members don't have protection and demand for one when they see someone protecting themselves.