AIBU to refuse to be held prisoner at work?

[KitKat1985]

www.theargus.co.uk/news/18227689.fresh-suspected-coronavirus-case-nurses-mill-view-hospital-held-quarantine/?fbclid=IwAR3IShE3kLzzULNr8qVGu-31Bxf_n4YbOVlDL1mXfm6CgQAdK1-XtTXRFCo

I'm a nurse in this Trust. The nurses involved have apparently been refused the right to leave the building and have bee there since yesterday because they treated a patient with suspected coronavirus. This in my opinion is complete overkill and they are essentially holding the staff like prisoners. Even if they were unlucky enough to get coronavirus, they won't immediately get ill and be contagious anyway, so why not just let them go home (maybe with facemasks etc on) and quarantine them there?! There's no way anyone is keeping me from going home from work.

It's all very well saying the staff should be quarantined, but there's still flights arriving every day from China and other heavily infected areas, and the majority of passengers arriving from there (Wuhan excepted) aren't being quarantined. Surely this is a much higher risk?

No its not.

The nurses in question are KNOWN to have had close contact with a known case. Medics because of the nature of their job are KNOWN to be at higher risk of infection of rare diseases.

Also being quarantined means you are under observation. From a Health and Safety point of view this is your employer looking out for you and making sure if you do have the disease they spot it at the earliest opportunity for your own benefit.

Outside Hubei province, the number of cases and infections is much much lower. Statistically speaking people coming from China and other places in Asia are less likely to have been in direct contact with someone infected. Plus many airlines have already stopped flights to and from China.

The thing is though, if staff genuinely think that by going to work there's a risk they won't be allowed home again, a large number of staff are just going to start refusing to go to work. And then what happens? For some people not being allowed home just isn't an option. What if you are a lone parent for example?

So quit being a nurse and get another job to pay your bills. It'd be a nice position to be in to just refuse to turn up for work but expect the bills to get paid.

There is always a risk of working in healthcare that you could be exposed to an illness or incident that could affect your health in someway either deliberately or accidently, and that might require you to be quarantined or otherwise hospitalised. Thats the nature of the job. Its extremely unusual but still possible.

If legally you are detained / incapacitated then the state would have a duty of care to provide emergency child care for any dependants you have.

The idea that large numbers of workers are going to go on strike if faced with a situation like this is laughable.

As a nurse do you know that 20% are needing serious levels of care and oxygen? That out of the people with outcomes 20% die and 80% recover at the moment, so actual death rate isn’t known. You would know you can’t become immune to it.
If 20% of the population needs ventilation, where the fuck will they go? Who will keep looking after the dialysis patients etc.

Okay fine you all think I'm being unreasonable. Fair enough.

But if every Trust takes this stance you are about to watch half the NHS workforce refuse to go into work because they can't put themselves in a position where they risk needing to have to go into quarantine.

Best of luck with that.

YANBU

When I think of all the virus’ and bacterial infections I get exposed to through my job and they go unchecked by occupational health for weeks, I’d have to be in quarantined for my whole life.

We (the NHS) have no idea what we’re doing about the new Coronavirus because it’s not strictly different to anything else out there.

So basically you believe that you know more about this than the WHO?

And for who is going to care for the patients: surely the staff that has already been infected and sick and got better again can just work. Do you even know how a virus works?

Would you quarantine your whole family too? You don't sound reliable tbh so I think it would be better that you would be quarantined at work.

Also most people here seem to be utterly missing the point that I'm not saying the staff shouldn't be quarantined. But you don't meet a patient with coronavirus and yourself become infectious a few seconds later. There's no need to be held in immediate quarantine and be unable to leave the immediate area.

And the PhD/MPhil in Epidemiology that would qualify your opinion was obtained ... where, OP?
Oh, that's right, just like 99+% of the rest of the general public - you don't have one, & need to do what you're told here.

a large number of staff are just going to start refusing to go to work.

I’ve seen nurses talk down patients from suicide attempts, tiny female nurses physically drag a large violent man of another female nurse, seen staff spend three hours on a usually 1/2 journey driving through snow to get to work, I’ve nursed on wards where there have been outbreaks of some incredibly infectious illnesses and actually been very very ill as a result, I’ve had a busted ear drums, whiplash and a broken tooth, from one punch and continued my shift because I wouldn’t let the ward be any more short staffed, than it already was.

If you or your coworkers are the type to refuse to carry out your duties in your country’s time of crisis, you should not be in nursing.

I had really thought that humans were more advanced than 1342 when the Black Death killed a third of Europe. That we were just a bit smarter than our ancestors and would respect the sense of quarantines instead of rushing home in a panic to infect our children.....our neighbours.....
That’s what people did back then and that was a big reason why so many died.

With all due respect to a probably highly educated nurse. Aren't the scientists/doctors making these calls (about quarantine etc) world experts. Why do you (or anyone on MN) think they know better?

If a hospital is quarantined where do the staff stay and eat. Does it mean the same staff look after the same patients all the time until test results come back and who looks after the staff if they become infected. It sounds quite a logistical nightmare.

KitKat I'm a lone parent. I'd stay in quarantine at the hospital as requested if a possibility I'd been exposed.

No parent, lone or otherwise, would expose their child by choice (& then other children/ people by their passing it on)

I'd rather my neighbours or friends look after my children for 2 weeks for me, than be even a small part of spreading something so contagious into a pandemic.

Yes but short of wearing hazmat suits all the time, and given that people are contagious before being symptomatic, most staff will be exposed to patients with coronavirus unwittingly before knowing they need to wear protective equipment. Which is exactly what has happened in this case.

Yep.

Which is precisely WHY healthworkers are more at risk of exposure and more at risk of infection and this high risk is precisely why, when they have been exposed to a patient known to have COVID-19 they have been quarantined and its now legally enforcable because some people don't seem to understand risk management.

@T0tallyFuckedUpFamily Absolutely you are right. I have worked in some dire conditions and put up with more physical and verbal abuse than I can shake a stick at, and I do it to look after mentally ill people in my care. BUT, if you ask me to choose between work and risking being away from my kids for 2 weeks, well then my children matter more to me. And I don't think I'll be alone in that.

But if every Trust takes this stance you are about to watch half the NHS workforce refuse to go into work because they can't put themselves in a position where they risk needing to have to go into quarantine.

Thankfully most of the staff that enter NHS fields aren’t as selfish as you, OP, so I don’t see that becoming an issue at all.

Come to think of it, during the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1918 that killed 20-40million people, they tried the whole quarantine at home thing and that just resulted in working age people passing it on to and killing the more vulnerable- their aged parents and their younger children (the elderly and the very young). They think one third the planet ended up infected, it became a pandemic.

Do you want a repeat of that OP? Spanish Flu was “just a Flu” too.....

There's no way anyone is keeping me from going home from work
What you want is irrelevant. They have the legal powers to forcibly detain you if you’re at risk of infection.

BUT, if you ask me to choose between work and risking being away from my kids for 2 weeks, well then my children matter more to me. And I don't think I'll be alone in that.

So that's it, you're not going in tomorrow then OP?

BUT, if you ask me to choose between work and risking being away from my kids for 2 weeks, well then my children matter more to me. And I don't think I'll be alone in that.

Then you’re in the wrong job and should go work in a none essential job, though I still have massive doubts, given your level of ignorance.

I reiterate, if this does become a pandemic and the government chooses to quarantine every staff member exposed to he virus, there will literally be no staff to treat all the sick people. This isn't a workable solution.

The point of the quarantine is to stop this becoming a pandemic.

I’m a nurse & YANBU.
Your family and especially your autistic daughter are your priority.
I agree that this “virus emergency”is being massively overplayed by the government & media.
The general public have no idea (& don’t care) about the risk that nurses in emergency care are occasionally placed under
OP, do what feels right for you. Don’t pander your the daily fail readers.

If a hospital is quarantined where do the staff stay and eat.
They stay in the hospital and eat in the cafeteria. Supplies and extra cots are delivered.

who looks after the staff if they become infected. The thing about quarantines is you can go in, but you can’t come back out, if more medical staff are needed due to staff falling sick, they will send in more people.

It sounds quite a logistical nightmare. It can be. Most especially the secure disposal of waste leaving a quarantine.

We’ll all breathe a huge sigh of relief now, Speckledhen. Thanks so much for your special insight

"a large number of staff are just going to start refusing to go to work"

Probably not those who need their salary to pay the bills.

If it ever becomes a serious emergency, then the Civil Contingencies Act would likely be used to invoke emergency powers to compel staff to report for work

@Speckledhen10 Thank you speckled hen. I just think 'media hysteria' is in over-drive here, as this thread shows.

So that's it, you're not going in tomorrow then OP?

Yup, that’s the must pertinent question. You’ve read that story, OP, so you know there’s now a chance of being put in the same position. You will have NO choice, but to be quarantined, if you come into close contact with a patient carrying Covid19, so are you resigning tomorrow?