A New Jersey nurse was suspended after she was able to fundraise over $12,000 to buy personal protective equipment for her and her colleagues. According to ProPublica, Olga Matievskaya, from Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, used some of the GoFundMe donations to purchase about 500 masks, 4,000 shoe covers and 150 jumpsuits for intensive care nurses. She told the website she got most of the supplies from eBay. However, the hospital administration suspended her on Saturday for giving out “unauthorized” protective gear. One nurse said there was “no information distributed” from the hospital about not being allowed to purchase supplies. Matievskaya declined to comment after her suspension, and the hospital doubled down on their policy against “unauthorized medical supplies” being given out. “The nurse in question was temporarily suspended for inappropriately distributing unauthorized medical supplies, against this policy,” the hospital said, adding that Matievskaya’s suspension ended Monday. Francis Giantomasi, the chairman of the hospital’s board of trustees, said that the hospital was experiencing a lack of medical supplies due to them being in “short supply everywhere and needed by everyone.” “That’s a serious, troubling, undeniable reality,” he said.
Read it at ProPublica
