“Funny how they didn’t have PPE stockpiled but they made it a priority of their treatment protocol to include a drug that wasn’t proven to work and shouldn’t be used in non-hospital settings.”
Nurses at Southeastern said they received little information about the new course of treatment.
“All they said was that they were starting these residents on Plaquenil. I started asking them, ‘Well, what’s Plaquenil for?’ ” one nurse recalled. “I started looking it up. We were always taught in nursing school that you’re supposed to know what medications you are giving, what it’s for and what the side effects are. I said, ‘Well, I don’t understand. Why are we giving it to the elderly?’ ”
“This is what’s ordered. This is what you’re supposed to give,” the nurse recalled being told by Shrikanthan, the center’s medical director.
In the past, nurses said, doctors at the center had provided explicit instructions for medications that could have adverse effects. In the case of hydroxychloroquine, nurses said they were given standard orders: five days of treatment, even for patients with heart problems. Hydroxychloroquine has been found to cause serious heart irregularities, such as life-threatening arrhythmias, in covid-19 patients.
“We all started looking it up and we found that this wreaks havoc on your system,” another nurse said. “You’re talking about people with pacemakers, people with [arrhythmia] … and we’re giving it to them without any parameters. It was just like we were starting them on any other medication.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/07/covid-cocktail-inside-pa-nursing-home-that-gave-some-veterans-hydroxychloroquine-even-without-covid-19-testing/