Several nurses from Maine Medical Center urged the hospital to stop planned rollbacks of employee COVID-19 protections at a press conference on Wednesday.

Jonica Frank, an operating room nurse, told us that ending the protections would hurt not only the hospital’s nurses, but also their patients. She said that although nursing conditions have come a long way since the beginning of the pandemic, removing those protections would be a step in the wrong direction.

The group said the hospital planned to roll back several policies, including allowing high-risk employees to work other assignments that don’t involve direct COVID-19 care, covering the cost of treatment for employees who get sick with the virus, and providing quarantine pay for employees who were exposed to the virus outside the hospital.

The group also criticized the timing of these changes, with hospitalizations and cases surging due to the spread of the Delta variant.

In response, a hospital spokesperson said they understood the frustration from nurses, but that not all of the claims made were entirely accurate.

Addressing the issue of employees who are considered high-risk, the hospital said “MMC and MaineHealth have made no changes to the policies governing medical accommodations in the workplace for employees with respect to treating patients who are positive for COVID-19. We continue to provide those accommodations to care team members based on an evaluation of their individual medical conditions consistent with federal guidelines.”

As of August 20th, the hospital also says it was following OSHA guidelines for employees who become ill with COVID-19, which state that employers should only cover the cost of quarantine for employees who contract the virus after being exposed outside of the workplace. However, in the hospital’s statement, they said they will “continue to exceed OSHA requirements by providing full quarantine pay for any care team member who tests positive for COVID-19 regardless of the source of infection,” thereby excluding team members who are exposed but do not get infected.

Another change includes rolling back paid time off for caregivers who are past 37 weeks of pregnancy. That benefit is slated to end on October 1st.

Emily Wilder, a critical care nurse and new mother, said she benefited from the policy while pregnant during the pandemic, and that it provided some assurance that other mothers would not feel at risk of getting COVID-19 while pregnant or caring for a newborn. “This was a fantastic and unique benefit to Maine Med nurses and it helped us out a lot,” Wilder said.

She also says that, at one point, she had to re-use N95 respirators that are explicitly marked for single-use only.

The hospital responded by saying that, under CDC guidance, staff can wear N95s under limited re-use. They said that no staff member has been directed to wear the respirators for more than one day.

The nurses also took issue with what they say has been a lack of communication about outbreaks. Frank said she was unaware of an outbreak linked to the operating room.

“Finding out about an outbreak from peers, or even worse, the evening news, is not how this critical information should get to us nurses,” she said Wednesday.