Nurse Erin
Marie Olszewski blew the whistle on the horrific maltreatment of
COVID-19 patients at Elmhurst Hospital Center, a public hospital in
Queens, New York, that was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the
U.S.
Elmhurst did
not isolate COVID-positive from untested patients, instead rooming them
together, thereby ensuring maximum spread of the disease
Some patients
who tested negative for COVID-19 were listed as positive and placed on
mechanical ventilation, thus artificially inflating the case numbers
while condemning the patient to death from lung injury
One such case
involved a male patient admitted for high blood glucose, which is easily
remedied and under no circumstance would require ventilation
Some of the
doctors treating COVID-19 patients at Elmhurst were first-year residents
who were treating without supervision. Most also ignored the expert
advice of more experienced nursing staff, choosing to use patients as
test subjects and “cash cows” instead
In this interview, retired Army combat veteran Erin Marie Olszewski, a nurse who for several months treated COVID-19 patients at the Elmhurst Hospital Center, a public hospital in Queens, New York — the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S.
She has now written a book, "Undercover Epicenter Nurse: How Fraud, Negligence, and Greed Led to Unnecessary Deaths at Elmhurst Hospital,"1 which details her experiences.
Olszewski was born in Michigan and raised in a small Wisconsin town
and joined the military at 17. When 9/11 happened, she was in basic
training. "I was only 18 years old so I grew up pretty quickly," she
says.
Altogether, she was stationed in Iraq for just over a year. Upon her
return to the U.S., she worked at the Special Operations Command in
Tampa, Florida, before leaving the military and going into nursing. Just
a bit over 20 years ago, July 2000, I read a study by Dr. Barbara
Starfield2 published in JAMA. It contained stats that identified physicians as the third leading cause of death.
I created that headline in July 2000, which took off as a meme and
spread across the world. In a shocking follow-up to Starfield’s article,
in 2012 her husband wrote a disturbing article in the Archives of
Internal Medicine3 about her death, pointing to a drug she was taking as a possible contributor to it.
“Specialization, fragmentation, drug-orientation and
profit-seeking help make American medical care the most expensive in the
world, but not the safest or most effective,” Dr. Neil A. Holtzman wrote.
"The lessons from Barbara’s death should be put in the perspective of
the millions who cannot afford even basic services in our expensive
system and suffer as a result.”
As if that's not egregious enough, newer death statistics reveal the
situation has only gotten worse over the years, and Olszewski's
experience during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates just how much more
dangerous medicine has become.
"I did go into this profession to help people … [but] it did not
take me long to realize that we're literally just pumping our patients
full of medications. Most of my job was morning meds, afternoon meds,
night meds ... [and] tests.
I've always had a passion for more of a natural approach to
health and it was devastating to me to realize that I wasn't really
helping these patients, I was contributing to the problem," Olszewski says.
"I always had that mindset as a nurse: How can I get these
patients to look through these meds and talk to the doctors and advocate
for them to get them off of all this?
I would hit a lot of roadblocks and so I ended up going to work
at a private practice where doctors were more concerned about not so
much profit, but the people. I always continued along those lines. Fast
forward to this year, we were essentially laid off from our jobs.
In Florida, we did it right. We didn't ban any of the alternative
treatments. They left it up to individual hospitals to make up their
own minds, so that's why we were very successful, whereas New York was
not."
Medical Negligence Was the Norm
As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed, New York, being a hotspot, was
in desperate need for skilled nurses, so Olszewski ended up
volunteering and went to work at Elmhurst in April 2020. "It was still
extremely packed in these hospitals with pretty much every single person
on a ventilator," she says.
Curiously, when she got there, she was told she'd have to wait days
for her assignment. Normally, in times of war, you're expected to
immediately get to work. This was the first red flag suggesting all was
not as it seemed. Some of the nurses had waited in hotel rooms for 18
days before they received their assignments.
"Why weren't they utilizing their resources, complaining that
they didn't have enough help when [there were] … 1,000, 2,000 nurses
sitting around in New York waiting for an assignment? That was very
confusing to me. If indeed this was essentially a war zone, people are
literally dying left and right, why aren't they utilizing us?
I finally did get an assignment and they put me at Elmhurst
Hospital … I got there and literally it took me one shift — 12 hours —
to realize that this is absolute chaos, and not because we didn't have
enough staff.
We were well staffed. It was because nobody cared. I literally
felt like I was living in the twilight zone. And, just knowing what I
know about our system anyway on a good day, this was just absolute
negligence."
Clearly, when you go into the hospital, you are at great risk of
medical mistakes that can accidentally kill you, and Olszewski's
experience highlights one of the key problems: willful gross negligence.
This is why it's so crucial to make sure you have an advocate with you
around the clock who can speak for you, ask questions and ensure
you're getting the appropriate treatment.
Due to COVID-19 infection concerns, family members were excluded
from the process here. They simply weren't allowed in. To me, that was
probably why so much of this abuse was able to occur. Olszewski agrees,
saying:
"That's exactly right. On top of that, they created a
liability-free environment. So now you have a liability-free
environment where everybody knows that no matter what they do, they're
not going to get in trouble for it. We have no family around putting us
in check …
You've got doctors and nurses that, at that point, just didn't
care because everybody was going to die anyway so what's the point? And
then you have everybody on a ventilator. So, these patients can't even
speak for themselves. They're at the hands of whoever is taking care of
them.
How do you sit by and allow this to happen? I don't know how so
many people knowingly knew this was going on and just chose to remain
quiet. It's just really sad."
Routine Ventilation Was a Death Sentence
By the time Olszewski started working at Elmhurst in April, doctors
around the world, including the U.S., had already started raising questions about the routine use of mechanical ventilation for COVID-19 patients. Within weeks, many started arguing that it appeared to be doing more harm than good.
That certainly proved accurate at Elmhurst. In a four-week period,
Olszewski only witnessed one patient put on mechanical ventilation who
survived, and that's because the sedation didn't quite take and he
ended up extubating himself. The sad tragedy is he didn't have any
medical indications warranting him being placed on a ventilator to
begin with.
Essentially, being put on a vent is the kiss of death and, according
to Olszewski, the staff at Elmhurst were aware of that. So, within her
first week, Olszewski spoke to an attorney and began secretly
videotaping her findings and interactions with the staff at Elmhurst.
This was necessary so that the public would believe her story. She
explains:
"Like I said, it didn't take me more than a shift to realize what
was going on. I got back to my hotel room and just broke down in tears
… I couldn't even believe it. I have a lot of nurse friends and I
asked them to hop on a Zoom call with me and I just let it all out.
One of them is a nurse practitioner, and she ended up kind of
being my proxy. She did a live video and it went pretty viral … She got
gaslighted by everybody. She had death threats. Everyone said she was
making it up.
So, I had contacted an attorney after a few days of seeing what
was going on with her, just trying to get my message out. And I'm like,
'Listen. No one's going to believe what's happening here because they
don't believe her … The only way the public is ever going to be able to
take this seriously and believe what I'm saying … is with actual
video.'
I had already tried to go up the chain of command and everybody
would just tell you, 'Just be quiet or you're gone.' You were considered
a troublemaker if you tried to advocate for your patients, and you
were pretty much shunned … There were nurses sent home prior to me
getting there, for doing the same things …
Ethics essentially just went out the window. My attorney actually
ended up getting me a pair of spy glasses in order to videotape and
they fit in with the rest of the PPE so it was never really questioned …
It was pretty terrifying, but at the same time I'm going in
there, looking at my patients like, 'You know what? You guys deserve
justice. This should have never happened, and I hope history never
repeats itself ever again.' That was the mission.
People need to know the truth and those that thought this was OK
need to be held accountable for these actions. In our profession, we're
supposed to be there for the patients. We're supposed to act with
integrity and compassion and none of that was happening."
Nurses Fired for Protecting Patients
As a general rule, nurses, who are in the trenches day in and day
out, are far more knowledgeable about the practical details to optimize
patient care than most physicians, who may understand the science
better but typically fail to appreciate critical implementation
variables.
Nurses who are in the trenches day in and day out typically know
what works and what doesn't. I can remember many times during my own
medical residency where nurses would correct decisions that, if
implemented, could have harmed the patient.
So, skilled nursing staff are really crucial components that help
keep patients safe. Unfortunately, in this case, nurses were routinely
overruled and ignored. According to Olszewski, she had many
conversations with her coworkers, all of whom said the same thing. They
just couldn't believe what was happening.
"I actually recorded a lot of those conversations too just because I didn't want people to think it was just me," she says.
"Really, everybody thought 'This is not OK.' But everybody was afraid
to say something … There are a lot of upset people and they try to hurt
you and silence you in any way that they can."
Olszewski was ultimately fired from Elmhurst for speaking out about
the conditions there. There are also petitions to remove her nursing
license. That, it seems, is a commonly used way to silence the
opposition these days. Olszewski vows to fight to keep her license.
Medical Experimentation by Residents Killed Patients
Making matters worse, many of the doctors treating COVID-19 patients
at Elmhurst were first-year residents, many of whom had never
interacted with patients before. According to Olszewski, many had "zero
bedside manner" and approached their patients as little more than
"something to practice on." "There were not many of them that really
had compassion for these lives," she says.
Typically, private hospitals do not have medical residents treating
patients, and if they do, they're strictly supervised. Elmhurst
Hospital, however, is a training hospital, and according to Olszewski,
residents had virtually no supervision at all. "I very rarely saw an
attending, so it was the residents running these floors," she says.
Worse, the residents were not leaning on the expertise of the nursing
staff.
"We couldn't even leave our patient's room because [the
residents] would come in and dial the ventilators, they'd mess with our
drips. We had to lock our pumps because they would just come in and
change it. That's unheard of on a normal day. Physicians never touch
our pumps or ventilators without letting us know."
When asked why residents would behave so inappropriately, Olszewski replies:
"A lot of ego, a lot of, 'They're going to die anyway so we just
want to experiment and see what works and what doesn't.' There were a
lot of errors being made and unnecessarily causing a lot of death. And I
can't explain it. Like I said, [you had a] liability-free environment …
[and] these residents weren't being monitored by the attending doctors
…"
Lack of Segregation Led to Unnecessary Deaths
The refusal to segregate infected patients from noninfected ones
also undoubtedly worsened the situation, placing lives at risk. In a
perfect scenario, infected patients would have been isolated in negative
pressure rooms, since the normal ventilation system can circulate the
virus throughput the hospital.
Still, by rooming infected and noninfected patients together, you
virtually ensure the disease will spread to noninfected patients being
treated for other health conditions.
Nurses also were not changing their personal protective equipment
(PPE) between patients. The same PPE was worn all day long. Elmhurst
didn't even have regulations requiring fresh PPE between patients or
when going from one room to the next.
COVID-Negative Patients Placed on Ventilation
Perhaps most egregious, COVID-negative patients were listed and
treated as confirmed positive, and some were even placed on mechanical
ventilation. One of them was a male patient admitted for high blood
glucose, which is easily remedied and under no circumstance would
require ventilation. Olszewski tells the story:
"They ended up giving him a lot of different psych drugs which,
ultimately, just kept that blood sugar going up and up. And, instead of
treating that, they ventilated him.
They put him on our COVID ICU floor, which is unheard of. And
he's anxious, so they have him tied down to the bed in restraints,
which makes anybody even more anxious. You can't have any
family in there, there's a bunch of nurses telling you to be quiet.
Anyone's going to fight in that type of situation. You're terrified to
be there in the first place …
I was in there just trying to hold his hand, talk to him, calm
him down, and one of the residents comes in saying 'If you don't calm
down, we're going to have to put a tube down you to help you breathe.' I
was just like, 'What are you doing? He doesn't need that.' Within five
minutes of my leaving for the end of my shift, he was on a ventilator.
That right there, that's just negligence."
New York Had Adequate Resources That Went Unused
The same medical fellow also refused to allow another patient to be
resuscitated, even though he did not have a do-not-resuscitate (DNR)
order. A fellow is someone who has completed their formal medical
training, graduated medical school, internship, and residency, and is
doing a sub specialty in some discipline of medicine. So, you'd expect a
fellow to act more responsibly than that.
"At that point, nobody really cared anymore," Olszewski says. The
doctors expected all patients to die anyway, and there was no liability
for anything that was being done or not done. Unfortunately, there was a
clear financial incentive for treating noninfected patients as
COVID-19 patients, and placing them all on mechanical ventilation. As
explained by Olszewski:
"They essentially turned Elmhurst into an all-COVID hospital … If
they were going to admit somebody, they were either COVID positive or
they were awaiting their test results. So, they would be admitted as
'COVID rule-out' and the hospital would still get the kickback. It was
$13,000 to admit a patient to the floor.
Some of these people, like the one that was unnecessarily vented,
he could have gone to the Navy ship Comfort, knowing he was negative
for COVID-19. They knew that. But they still admitted him, got the
$13,000 and then ventilated him for another $39,000. This was happening
consistently.
There's no reason these patients had to be packed in like
sardines when we had external resources that weren't being utilized. So
why? … Maybe it was the financial incentive … That's just people just
not caring and putting profit over these patients."
Death Rate Plummeted Once Treatment Protocols Were Exposed
While Olszewski has been largely ostracized by her nursing
colleagues, most of whom likely fear losing their jobs if they openly
side with her, the death rate at Elmhurst plummeted after Olszewski's
undercover videos started making the rounds on social media.
Her hour-long interview in the "Perspectives on the Pandemic" series, which has 1.4 million views,4 was released to the public June 9, 2020. Daily death rates in New York City hospitals dropped dramatically after that.5
"I personally think that this has had an impact on the deaths in
New York because after that video went out and they were outed on their
treatment protocols, the death rate plummeted,” Olszewski says.
I think they're a lot more cautious about who they're admitting
to these hospitals and how many people are being put on the ventilators
[now]. In early April when I got there, I questioned a doctor that I
also recorded and he admitted that not one patient had been
successfully extubated.
So, by the time I got there, every single patient on a ventilator
died. And they refused to try any alternative treatments even though
we know a lot of alternative treatments existed. Their excuse was that
they didn't work. And my question was, 'Listen, if you know the
ventilators aren't working, then why not try [the alternatives]?'"
Government Should Not Interfere in Medical Decisions
The tragedy is that hydroxychloroquine with zinc likely would have
made a significant difference if routinely used in the early stages of
disease, and in suspected cases. It clearly was helpful in Florida,
where some doctors have been using it.
Quercetin also works similarly to hydroxychloroquine. Both drive
zinc into the cell, and quercetin, being a supplement, doesn't require a
prescription and also has other effects, such as SIRT2 activation and
decreasing inflammation, which actually make it a better choice.
However, like hydroxychloroquine, quercetin must also be used with zinc
— and administered very early in the course of the illness.
Still, considering asymptomatic patients were being roomed with
those who had confirmed COVID-19, either of these options could have
protected many of these patients. It's really incomprehensible that a
treatment has been so badly maligned, to the point that pharmacy boards
have refused to fill prescriptions for a drug that's been on the market
for more than six decades.
"I think every patient has a right to try multiple different alternatives," Olszewski says.
"High-dose IV vitamin C [has also] successfully treated patients in
Asia and some people in New York when [the pandemic] first started. Why
are these alternative treatments being frowned upon?
Has this caused even more deaths? Honestly, government shouldn't
ever get involved in the doctor-patient relationship. People should be
able to have a choice and the freedom to be able to have these
alternative treatments available to them if they can save their life.
Autonomy and patient rights are just gone … Patients deserve to
be treated like humans, and politics and profit should never be placed
above human life, ever."
One of the most effective treatments to date in the hospital setting appears to be the MATH+ protocol,
which includes high-dose vitamin C, steroids, thiamine and heparin. It
has protocols both for early intervention and late-stage disease.
However, I plan on posting an update to the nebulized hydrogen
peroxide video as I have modified the recommendation. I've had a number
of people use it with very severe disease and recovered from the
symptoms in a matter of hours. I had no idea this treatment was so
effective.
Fortunately, since Olszewski started speaking out, others have
braved the backlash and spoken out about medical mismanagement as well.
One of them is featured in the video below. Warning though the video is
very emotional and the nurse uses some understandable profane language.
On the downside, physicians at Elmhurst who were responsible for
implementing orders that led to patients' deaths may or may not be held
liable for their actions.
"There are some clauses in that order that gross negligence is liable," Olszewski says.
"Families are coming forward and many of them are very upset, so maybe,
hopefully, there will be a federal investigation and there will be
accountability for these actions. I feel there should be."
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