April 6, 2020

CLICK HERE to view a five-minute clip of the CNN special

CLICK HERE to read a transcript of the CNN special

CLICK HERE to read a UUP-reported story on Downstate members

Julie Eason, the respiratory therapy department director at SUNY’s University Hospital of Brooklyn, isn’t jolted by the CODE 99 calls that periodically blare over the hospital public address system, alerting doctors to another COVID-19 patient in need of a respirator.

As jolted as she used to be, anyway.

"They're so sick you lose them in a heartbeat, they're that sick," Eason, above, a Downstate Chapter member, told CNN. "They're talking to you and then a few minutes later you're putting a tube down their throat and you're hoping that you can set the ventilator in such a way that it actually helps them."

"We have some young people in there in their 20s, not used to seeing this and some had a thousand-mile stare, just crying," Dr. Lorenzo Paladino, a Downstate UUP member, said of patients waiting for coronavirus treatment in Downstate’s emergency room. “This is 'Grey's Anatomy' stuff for them, not real life. It shouldn't happen in front of them."

Eason and Paladino, above, are two of many Downstate Chapter members on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic who were spotlighted in a CNN special, “Inside the ER: The Incredible Fight Against Coronavirus.” The hour-long special aired nationwide April 5.

Other Downstate UUP members interviewed in the special are Dr. Cynthia Benson, Dr. Mafuzur Rahman, Dr. Robert Gore, Dr. Robert Foronjy, and Michael McGillicuddy, Downstate's Gross Anatomy Lab supervisor and mogue supervisor.

“Words don’t describe how proud we are of our members on the front lines of the coronavirus, at Downstate, our public teaching hospitals at Stony Brook and Syracuse, and our health sciences center in Buffalo,” said UUP President Fred Kowal. “The CNN special showed the dedication and passion our Downstate members, working amid chaos and shortages of protective gear each day to care for COVID-19 patients.”

The CNN special provided a stark, unfiltered look at what doctors, nurses and healthcare workers at University Hospital—part of SUNY Downstate Health Sciences Center—are dealing with as a COVID-19 only hospital. The governor designated the public medical center as a COVID-19 only hospital in March, one of three in the state.

“This is what we trained to do this is what we signed up for, said Benson. “Just not in this volume.”