Dear Michael, Jeff, and David,

As a labor and delivery RN providing care for the most vulnerable patients (pregnant and postpartum people and their newborn babies), I write to you urgently. To tell the honest truth, my colleagues and I are terrified. We are terrified for our patients and ourselves. Every night before work we kiss our babies and wonder if this is the last time we will touch their faces and hold them in our arms - for weeks, months, or longer. My personal plan for COVID is to continue to work until I get sick. The longer I can stay healthy, the more patients I can keep safe. This is where I need your help. 

As you hopefully know, healthcare providers such as myself face a severe shortage of personal protection equipment (PPE) in the United States, specifically N95 masks. As my colleagues and I have been debriefed by our healthcare organizations, when it comes to COVID - the United States healthcare system is on a similar trajectory as the catastrophic outcomes in Italy. I'm having conversations with my peers about how we will care for patients gasping for air, as they wait for a ventilator that may never come. We are aware that many patients will receive palliative care if we run out of beds, ventilators or people like me to take care of them - HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS. I have practiced how to don (put on) and doff (take off) PPE without spraying myself with virus particles. But I don't know how to keep myself safe if I don't have access to it. As a nurse I will continue to show up to work, and anticipate that the question of becoming infected myself with COVID is not an "if", but a "when."

Michael, I am personally asking you to slow production of any non-essential medical supply product your company - 3M - produces, in order to focus on the manufacturing of PPE. I am asking you to innovate in collaboration with other large corporations who would otherwise suffer deleterious economic effects from this pandemic - repurposing factory space and supply chains to manufacture PPE.

Jeff, I know you are fascinated and compelled by the resilience of the human spirit, as evidenced by your financial investments into space exploration. You strive towards a vision of human heroism and defiance of great odds. But right now, those odds are not in our ability to project ourselves as human beings into space, but to keep our fellow human beings alive in the face of an epidemic. I ask you to utilize your ingenuity and innovation to steer your company AMAZON towards the prioritizing of the delivery of life-sustaining supplies (PPE) to first line caregivers such as myself. If you have to halt 2 day delivery of 12 reams of toilet paper in the time being, please do so. Hopefully your customers will understand that having healthy healthcare providers available to maintain someone's airway is more important than having toilet paper on demand.

David, I am personally asking you as the CEO of Proctor & Gamble, to step up to this challenge. We need detergent to clean scrubs. We need disinfecting wipes to clean work surfaces. Soap kills COVID virus particles … but if we don't have it, we can't use it.

Regardless of how you feel about what's going on - our ability as a society to "flatten the curve" vs. focusing on our individualistic needs, all the obstacles created by our government's actions or inactions, frustrations about your company's limitations and uncertainty about our shared future - please think of me. Think of my hands I need to keep clean. Think of my lungs that need to remain healthy and strong. Think of all the patients I will be able to keep safer, for longer … if only I have your help.

 

Sincerely, thank you, and let you and your families be safe and well,

Kate Novotny, RNC-OB

CREDIT:

Photo: Photo by Daan Stevens.

Read this ED physician's important message that inspired this petition.

CONTACT:

Michael F. Roman, CEO of 3M. 

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. 

David S. Taylor, CEO Proctor & Gamble.