Army combat veteran and registered nurse Erin Olszewski's most deeply held values were put to the test when she arrived as a travel nurse at Elmhurst Hospital in the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. After serving in Iraq, she was back on the front lines—and this time, she found, the situation was even worse.
Rooms were filthy, nurses were lax with sanitation measures, and hospital-acquired cases of COVID-19 were spreading like wildfire.
Worse, people who had tested negative multiple times for COVID-19 were being labeled as COVID-confirmed and put on COVID-only floors. Put on ventilators and drugged up with sedatives, these patients quickly deteriorated—even though they did not have coronavirus when they checked in.
Erin wasn't about to stand by and let her patients keep dying on her watch, but she knew that if she told the truth, people wouldn't believe her. She began to share what she found on social media. Unsurprisingly, she was fired for it.
Now, Erin is standing up to tell the whole horrifying story of what happened inside Elmhurst Hospital to demand justice for those who fell victim to the hospital's greed. Not only must the staff be held accountable for their unethical actions; but also, this kind of corruption must be destroyed so that future Americans are not put at risks.
