A Georgia nurse explained her decision to quit her job after being frustrated with the burdens placed on healthcare staff due to the coronavirus pandemic, KMOV reported.

Melissa Thomas Scott posted a fiery Facebook video a week ago, calling out her superiors at the Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Georgia, for endangering her life and other nurses at the hospital.

"My manager sent me to a floor that's being tested for Corona. She knows my health history. She knows all of this. I told her my kids don't have anybody to go to while they're here. I can't send my kids away like everybody else. I'm done, I'm leaving. I quit! I care about the patients and all but my kids and my life, they matter, they come first,” Thomas Scott said in the video which racked up thousands of views and brought out both positive and negative reactions from people online.

Albany has made national news in recent weeks because the small town of just 75,000 residents has an extraordinarily high rate of coronavirus infections, with nearly 1,000 people testing positive, Business Insider reported.

The rate of infections makes it the fourth worst-hit town in the country and can mostly be traced back to a single funeral where most of the infections began, according to The New York Times.

While some supporters said Thomas Scott's reaction made sense because of her five children and her health history as a breast cancer survivor, other people criticized her, claiming she was abandoning sick patients and giving up on her fellow nurses in a time of need.

On Tuesday, the nurse told Tamron Hall in an interview that the video was made during an extremely stressful situation and that people were not understanding the danger hospital officials were putting nurses in.

“There is a nationwide shortage of protective personal equipment. So we are being required to reuse the same gown and same mask the entire shift,” she said, highlighting a problem thousands of nurses across the country have said is a major issue for hospitals.

On top of the lack of personal protective equipment, nurses and doctors are contracting the disease but are still being asked to work while sick, particularly in Albany, Georgia, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Thomas Scott noted that she wished she handled the situation differently but explained that her husband lives out of state and her children would have nowhere to go if she contracted the virus.

"I worked hard for my nursing degree, of course, I don't want to just give up nursing … and I love where I work. I doubt, since I went to social media, that they are going to let me come back and I do regret how I handled it. But, like I said, you're not thinking clearly when you're upset,” she said.

During another interview with the Breakfast Club, she explained the situation further, saying her boss at the hospital had notified every other nurse about working in the coronavirus ward beforehand except for her. She said her boss didn't notify multiple people they had already worked with a coronavirus patient and was subsequently putting many nurses' lives in danger. Thomas Scott claimed the manager in charge, who she did not name, was not following hospital policy and was putting nurses with preexisting conditions in coronavirus wards without their consent.

She said nurses in her area were not getting hazard pay despite being asked to work with patients who have the coronavirus. She added that she wasn't the only one to quit their job at the hospital that day.

"There have been reports that you can still contract the virus even with the proper PPE, so I followed up with people I know in upper management, I even called employee health. Both said whether or not you had PPE on at the time of care, your manager is supposed to notify you. And I was never notified," Thomas Scott said.

Albany-Georgia

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