Calling themselves “disposable” and “abandoned,” nurses in Jersey City Medical Center’s Emergency Department have accused the hospital’s management of ignoring their requests for enhanced safety measures and forcing them to use vacation time when they were out sick with COVID-19.

In interviews with The Jersey Journal, four emergency department nurses at the RJWBarnabas Health facility said their requests for more protective gear and safety protocols, such as a designated shower, locker space and divert patients to other hospitals were ignored.

The nurses, all of whom preferred to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, said that the emergency department went for long stretches without supervision. And as more and more medical providers called out sick after catching the coronavirus, nurses said they were denied hazard pay and were forced to use paid time off (PTO) when they called out sick.

“It almost feels like they don’t care about the safety of their patients and their staff,” one nurse told The Jersey Journal.

Sharon Ambis, a spokeswoman for Jersey City Medical Center, declined to address the staff’s specific allegations.

“We are so proud of the dedicated nurses, doctors, and entire staff at Jersey City Medical Center who are tremendously committed and selflessly devoted to their patients and to each other during what is arguably the most unimaginably challenging time for most of us in our entire lives," she said in an email.

In an April 6 letter to the emergency department’s director of nursing, obtained by The Jersey Journal, emergency department staff requested “an urgent meeting” to address issues they faced. “For the past few weeks, we felt a greater urge to communicate the seriousness of the current issues that we are facing in the Emergency Room,” nurses wrote.

In the letter, which nurses said was signed by a majority of the emergency department staff, requested that “at least one member" from management be present in the department until after the pandemic. The hospital’s chief nursing officer had been seen in the emergency department only twice in the past month and a half, one nurse said. And after a department supervisor had gotten sick, the night shift had even gone “several weeks” with no management, one nurse said.

“There was this absolute lack of transparency and understanding of what was going on on our level,” one nurse said. “Our department felt abandoned.”

The letter also addressed safety issues, asking that management create a protocol for transporting COVID-19 patients and add more negative pressure areas — rooms for patients with infectious diseases in which the ventilation is engineered to stay inside the room to prevent airborne pathogens from escaping.

Emergency department staff also requested the hospital provide coveralls and scrubs, as well as “preventive lodging measures” and a designated locker and shower space to avoid bringing contamination home.

The staff also requested that the hospital be placed on divert status when at capacity, meaning emergency medical services are notified that the hospital cannot accept more patients. Jersey City Medical Center makes a practice of not going on divert, staff told The Jersey Journal.

Although it means turning away patients, nurses said that going on divert actually means a safer environment for patients and medical staff.

“It’s having a negative impact on the care of the patients that are already there,” another said, adding that not going on divert meant “determining that the patients who are coming in should be considered over the patients who are already there.”

As a result, one nurse said, the emergency department had been “absolutely slammed.”

The department was so crowded that the hospital was housing some patients in hallways without monitoring equipment, nurses said.

Some patients had been hooked up to portable oxygen canisters, which only last 45 minutes, one nurse said — and because there were no monitors, nurses needed to be constantly checking up on them in case the oxygen ran out.

In the letter to the nursing director, the emergency nurses wrote that even when fully staffed, “our ED is struggling to stay afloat” and requested that the hospital bring on more staff to relieve stress on the department.

Nurses estimated that between 20 and 30 members of the nursing staff were out sick at one point.

The department staff had also requested hazard pay for work during the outbreak, as well as “specific epidemic/pandemic sick leave ... for all staff infected while laboring in our ED.”

Instead, emergency nurses said they have been forced to use vacation time if they are out sick with the coronavirus. Multiple nurses said that they were out sick with the virus at the time of the interviews and were currently using their PTO, with one saying the virus had required the cancellation of vacation plans.

In the past week, the nurses said the situation in the emergency department had calmed down somewhat. Management had shifted a handful of other staff to the emergency department and installed air filters in the department, one nurse said. Another nurse said that management has been “more involved in patient care” in the department over the past week.

But all the nurses interviewed said that most of their requests had gone unanswered. “Nothing has changed,” one said in a text message.

Two people interviewed by The Jersey Journal said they personally know at least five people who have quit, and many more are considering leaving or are searching for other jobs.

But all the nurses interviewed said that managers had told them if they quit, they would be barred from working at any RWJBarnabas Health hospital again. RWJBarnabas Health operates more than a dozen hospitals and numerous other facilities in New Jersey.

Despite the alleged threats, some nurses interviewed said they were still considering leaving.

“We don’t want to abandon our posts. We know that we’re needed right now,” one nurse said. “As soon as this pandemic has eased up, I think we’re going to see a mass exodus.”