Check the article for the many links and the large amount of detail that is not found here. There is a video at the bottom of the linked page.
In this interview, retired Army combat veteran Erin Marie Olszewski,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPqfY2F2KR8summary
she made a video in march, and released a book months later
she got debunked months ago
there are other sources that also debunked her
including other doctors in the same hospital as her that reveal she got fired from the role in just 1 month because she was not helping patients
heres one
I am appalled that anyone in the healthcare profession would feel it is okay to secretly video their coworkers, patients, and their medical records. I am appalled that a NURSE would feel it is acceptable to speak to fellow nurses about issues within the hospital in front of her patient and in the patient's room, all while her secret camera is rolling. I am speechless that a nurse would want to incriminate and degrade herself, as a nurse, by publicizing these videos whilst barely blurring her patients identity. I cannot even begin to understand why a nurse would feel the need to bad mouth a community and a hospital system that did everything they possibly could, to keep the system from completely collapsing and prevent their community from losing thousands. I will never agree with the fact that any person, much less a nurse that was making $10,000/week during their time in NYC, would have the audacity to create a 'Go-Fund Me' account to raise money for herself in the event she "loses her license and integrity" for "telling the truth" about a hospital. Tricking thousands of people, that already follow her on social media, to donate money to reach her $150,000 goal. I cannot speak of the opinion of my fellow Krucial Staffing nurses, nor the staff nurses of this hospital, but I am certain they would all agree Erin Marie lost all respect and integrity from every medical professional here, when she made the conscious decision to deceptively and falsely accuse all of our peers of "murdering" our patients. She openly disclosed the type of person she truly is, when she used her social media status, to boast of her accomplishments while simultaneously condemning fellow healthcare professionals. Our super-nurse Erin forgot to mention her criminal record. She forgot to mention all the articles she was involved with regarding conspiracy theories, anti-vax drama, and conflict of interests with a vaccine bill in FL. From a simple google search, I quickly found out she must thrive for the spotlight based on the other articles and interviews with news stations I came across.
I work for the same company this nurse did. I was placed at the same hospital this nurse was assigned. I watched the video she posted when she "decided to go home" and recorded her crocodile tears for the world to see. See, the thing is, ironically, she did not decide to go home. She was sent home, fired, released of her duties. She neglected to tell her followers and the media that nugget of information. Unlike her, though, I am part of the group that was the very first to step foot into that building. Unlike her, we did not have the luxury of getting to NYC and being paid to sit at the hotel for 2-3 days before working. We arrived on a Friday and started working the next day. We have been tirelessly committing ourselves to this hospital to help get things back to normal since March 28th. Unlike her, I am still here. A lot of the nurses from the beginning are still here... 11 weeks later. Away from our families. Our homes. Still working every single night, up until 1 week ago when they moved everyone to 48 hour weeks. We are tired. We are mentally drained. We have been through absolute hell during these 11 weeks. For this self-assured, 15 minutes of fame, attention-seeking nurse to blatantly LIE about this hospital, just disgusts me.
When I first walked in to my first shift in the Emergency Dept at this hospital, I was shocked at what I was seeing. The ED census was more than 3 times over the “max.” We had 160-170+ patients all shoved into an ED meant to hold 50-60 patients. But Erin Marie cannot attest to the kind of hard work we did. Erin Marie was not here during the worst of it. We didn’t have time to “turn our cameras on” and disrespect physicians and nurses that were absolutely near their breaking point, just to question their care or argue with them about what other countries are doing.
We spent every single second of our shifts constantly checking O2 sats, changing oxygen tanks, rearranging overly packed rooms, as if we were playing a game of Tetris, with more stretchers and patients. We were constantly getting patients to turn, cough, deep breath. I could not even count the number of patients that were all wearing non-rebreather masks at 15L/min. Multiple patients connected to a multi-valve system going to a huge oxygen tank that had to be changed nearly every hour or everyone on that oxygen would become hypoxic. Quick-thinking PA's and residents using bio-hazard bags and plastic connectors to fabricate 'homemade' non-rebreather mask, because the hospital had depleted the stock.
We struggled to do absolutely everything we could to attend to the needs of 6-8 patients on ventilators and Bi-PAP machines crammed into a room meant to hold 3 patients. We constantly listened to vents, monitors, and other machines beep while working diligently to correct the reason each machine was beeping. We dealt with climbing through the stretcher maze to bring the EKG machine or vital sign machine to the patient's bedside to check their vitals and check their QT interval to ensure it was safe to continue administering Zithromax and Plaquenil. We did everything in our power to maintain patient privacy during exams.
We repetitively gave patients, one after another, Zithromax, Tylenol, etc etc, all while trying to maintain our own mental and physical health. We constantly worried about whether we would become sickened with Covid-19. We listened to the media and health professionals urge 'social-distancing,' 'six-feet apart,' 'stay home,' and there we were spending 12 hours a night in a Covid cesspool. We watched the staff at this hospital morn the loss of their friends and their co-workers who lost the battle to this virus. We were pushed and pulled when conflicting information was put out about how to treat Covid. Do this. Do that. Air-borne. Droplet. We worried about having enough PPE. We worried about our families ever seeing us again.
Every single person in this Emergency Department was SICK. They did not come in complaining of anxiety, as Erin claimed. These patient's were all complaining of fever, cough, abdomen pain, shortness of breath. We quickly got to the point that we did not have to rely on a stupid, erroneous human developed “test” to tell us if a person had Covid. You could look at them and just know. Before I started wearing a industrial-style respirator and only wore the green 3M N-95 mask, I could smell a Covid positive patient's breath when they coughed up almost black sputum. The sputum these patient's coughed up was like tar. Thick, dark brown and evidence of the damage to the inside of their lungs. That's not anxiety. We read the words "ground-glass opacity" over and over again. There was not a single physician, nurse, respiratory therapist that had ever been in this kind of situation before. We were all scared, especially scared for our patients.
I will not argue with the fact that some of the stuff we all saw on the media was partly true. There was truth to some of the horror stories. People were dying left and right, but it was not because of incompetent doctors or because the patient was put on a ventilator for shits and giggles. We did not put patient's on ventilators just to "sedate them" like Erin Marie claims. We tried every intervention possible to give the patient some relief from their respiratory distress before resulting to the vent. We explained the risks to the patient. We FaceTimed with their families to discuss the risks. Now this is the actual point these people got anxious. When they knew they were getting worse and they were tiring out, struggling with each breath, praying they did not have to get intubated. The ventilators were on short supply, initially. I would not want to be in the physician's shoes when the time came to decide, "who do we intubate?" Nurses and doctors and residents, alike, trying to all work together to just do what we are trained to do.
One of the first realizations I had to come to was the fact that this is not "normal healthcare." This is far from what any of us were used to. It is absolutely impossible to provide the type of care we usually give our patient's when there is only X amount of nurses and doctors, and 150-170 patient's in one area, at one time. It was like a war zone. Disaster Triage processes were utilized. Decisions had to be made that helped the patient's who were most likely to survive, so resources were not wasted when they were scarce. Erin wouldn't be able to speak of those types of things. She did not work through it. Erin did not witness the kind of bonds that instantly formed between complete strangers the moment we hit this floor working. The staff here quickly became family. And as the weeks went by and we turned into little ninja Covid-fighters, all of a sudden; the eye of the storm came. It slowed down. The ED was not packed like sardines. It was shocking.
Our relationship with this hospital and it's staff grew. We became one heck of a family. It enrages me that someone that barely knows what she is talking about, disrespects my "family."
Elmhurst is a city hospital in the poorest community in NYC. The people in this community sometimes live 10+ people in a one bedroom apartment. The vast majority are immigrants, some that I assume are not documented US citizens. The majority of the population here are Hispanic, Indian, Nigerian, Bengali, Haitians, Jamaican... and for Erin Marie to make the accusation that "black and brown people are being murdered" in this hospital, is the most insensitive statement she made, during our Country's current racial issues. With that being said, a lot are non-compliant with the little healthcare they participate in. Most of the patients that Elmhurst treats are uninsured and will never be able to make payments to a hospital. They are poor. Yet, I have not seen this hospital refuse care to anyone. The hospital does not have the fanciest equipment, it does not have all the supplies we all use back home, but despite the under-funding and support from City/State, before Covid came along, they continue to work hard and give the best care that they can. ALWAYS. I can attest to the fact that we NEVER once went without PPE. We always had the equipment we needed to protect ourselves. Elmhurst cared about our well-being. There are times I do not agree with the treatment plan of the patients, sure, but I experienced that working at fancy Trauma Centers in Baton Rouge that had ample amount of funds and were building state of the art hospitals. It saddens me for the regular staff at this hospital to be constantly bad mouthed and ridiculed, when I have personally witnessed them do everything in their power to 'keep on keeping on.'
There is not a perfect hospital. Physicians makes mistakes. Nurses make mistakes. We are human. Could we have prevented as many people from dying of Covid if we did this or did that? No one knows; but we damn sure tried and we damn sure never gave up.
For Erin Marie to use her social media platform to aim more darts at a struggling hospital is not what humanity needs. That is not what a 'nurse' does. Imagine the impact Erin could have made if she brought positive awareness to the need in this community. Imagine if she created a 'GoFund Me' account in honor of the hospital to raise money for new monitors for the emergency department.
And now, after everything else we have been through, the hospital is receiving bomb threats. Death threats have been sent to various staff members here. All because some air-headed nurse trying to get famous, thought it was a good idea to spread untrue information.
I will never forget the nurses and doctors I work with at Elmhurst. I will proudly say that this sassy-mouthed southern girl hung in there with the New Yorkers and did everything I could to be the best nurse I could be during such an unknown and difficult time for every healthcare provider. I am overwhelmed with emotion when I think about what we all have accomplished during my time here. I am still in disbelief that I was a major player in a world-wide crisis and pandemic.
Erin, I hope you see this. I hope you feel disgust for yourself for the lies you told. I pray you realize what a real nurse is and strive to reclaim that title. I hope you learn from your mistakes and realize the type of destruction you might have caused.
To all my fellow heroes at Elmhurst, I stand with you. We are Elmhurst strong.... LOOK AT WHAT WE’VE ACCOMPLISHED!