Stressful day – including one more visit from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – to walk me through the Ebola protocol at Bellevue and try to make it clear to the layman. Nate Link, Bellevue’s medical director, took time out of an incredibly They talked about being shunned by friends and acquaintances who knew where they worked.Įventually, I got an email from Bellevue saying officials there thought the stigma faced by health care workers was important to talk about. Nurses and other employees talked about their own perhaps irrationalīut understandable fears of passing the virus to their families, despite their protective gear and sanitizing showers. Iīy the second day, we had enough of what the editors wanted – specific, reliable information – to feel confident in writing the story. Then I thought of my editor, and how I would explain to him that I had gone home instead of the extra mile. He might tell me the kids really needed me at home, but he declined to get involved. Before going, I did a Google Maps search and saw that it was only a 16-minute ride from the office, not enough time to complain about. one night, I hopped on my bike and rode through the dark Manhattan streets to one nurse’s apartment to knock on her door. At the same time, my editor sent two intrepid stringers to buttonhole Bellevue workers outside the hospital and at nearby subway stops. Nonetheless, over two days, I continued working my sources. It did not take long toįind that, as I expected, Bellevue workers had been warned by the public relations department not to talk to the press. My first move was to search my GoogleĬontacts for the word “Bellevue.” Up popped random names and numbers I had saved from other Bellevue stories, like Hurricane Sandy, which had forced the hospital to evacuate. My assignment was to get workers to talk and to find specific cases that we could document. de Blasio spoke only in generalities about how the workers were being mistreated. de Blasio’s public admission that Bellevue workers were feeling stigmatized was jarring. And obviously, they have a strong interest in protecting their own reputations and These sources are wonderful at feeding the news beast the basic information, but often they do not go much beyond that. The Ebola story in New York has been a tough one from the beginning because, as reporters, we have been very dependent on official sources like the health department, the mayor’s office, the police and emergency “ThisĪfter working many days without a break (including the previous weekend, on an article about how a new state law has barred 34,500 mental patients from having guns), I managed to beg off duty Sunday and was at the movies.īut a senior editor heard the mayor’s talk and was intrigued. In a “media availability” at the hospital Sunday, the mayor chastised his fellow citizens for mistreating Bellevue workers, especially the nurses, out of fear that they would spread Ebola. It was a remark by Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday that got us thinking about the psychological stress that people at Bellevue Hospital Center might be feeling as they took care of New York’s first Ebola patient. When the story came to New York, Anemona Hartocollis, the Metro health reporter, was called on to cover a new angle: the stigma facing health workers at Bellevue Hospital Center. Reporters and editors on the International, National and Science desks have been working around the clock to cover the news about Ebola.
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