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Undercover Epicenter Nurse: How Fraud, Negligence, and Greed Led to Unnecessary Deaths at Elmhurst Hospital by [Olszewski Marie Erin]

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Undercover Epicenter Nurse blows the lid off the COVID-19 pandemic.

What would you do if you discovered that the media and the government were lying to us all? And that hundreds, maybe thousands of people were dying because of it?

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.

Doctors-in-training were refusing to perform CPR—and banning nurses from doing it—on dying patients whose families had not consented to “Do Not Resuscitate” orders.

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. It was just too shocking. Willing to go to battle for her patients, Erin made the decision to go deep undercover, recording conversations with other nurses, videos of malpractice, and more. 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. The deaths have to end, and Erin won’t rest until the bad actors are exposed.

Undercover Epicenter Nurse: How Fraud, Negligence, and Greed Led to Unnecessary Deaths at Elmhurst Hospital is a shocking and infuriating inside exposé of the American healthcare system gone wrong. At the same time, it’s the story of a woman who traveled from the small-town streets of Wisconsin, to the battlefields of Iraq, to the mean streets of Queens, on a quest to help fight for her country. With this book, the real battle has begun.

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August 18, 2020
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Erin Marie Olszewski, BSN, RN, has spent her life fighting for the freedom of everyday Americans. As a young woman, she joined the US Army to fight overseas in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Returning home, she turned her focus, drive, and dedication to defending our most deeply held values on American soil. Erin has spent years fighting for medical freedom. As a registered nurse and a mom of a vaccine-injured child, she has seen firsthand the effects of forced treatment on infants, young children, and adults. In 2020, Erin volunteered for the front lines yet again as a traveling nurse assigned to New York's Elmhurst hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. What she found there horrified her and inspired a new focus to her advocacy. Erin's forthcoming book, The Undercover Epicenter Nurse, will reveal how gross negligence, insurance fraud, medical malpractice, and good old-fashioned greed are killing everyday Americans at Elmhurst and beyond. Her new fight is a fight for a return to ethics, transparency, and respect for the truth—values sorely needed in the medical field today, and in our country at large. Everyday Americans are needed in that battle as well. Join her.

J.B. Handley is the author of How to End the Autism Epidemic and is the co-founder and chairman of Generation Rescue. He is also the co-producer of the documentary film Autism Yesterday and the co-founder of the Age of Autism blog.

Review

"First, do no harm."
—Hippocrates of Kos, 400 B.C.

"I think this is a scandal. I don't use that word lightly. You were sent home for complaining about a policy of putting COVID patients with people who weren't infected. That's shocking!"
—Tucker Carlson, author and political commentator

Erin Marie is a brave patriot who not only risked her health, but also risked losing her nursing license by going undercover at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic at Elmhurst Hospital in NY and exposing the reprehensible care being rendered there. I commend her for her courage and service to humanity.
—Dr. Joseph Mercola, founder, Mercola.com

“I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the truth about what happened in the NYC hospitals during the COVID-19 crisis. This is an important step toward ensuring that Patients’ Rights are protected, and I thank Erin for going the extra mile to hold the line for Patients’ Rights. All patients have inalienable rights to have food, water, and family at the bedside. They have a right to receive Standard of Care treatment from qualified medical professionals with full and voluntary informed consent.”
—Nicole Sirotek, BSN

“Elmhurst practices medicine by guidelines unheard of in a first-world country—and justified it, due to their classification as a city hospital. Modern-day policies and best-practice standards are non-existent. As crisis nurses, we did what we are trained to do; don our gear and get to work. Serving the people of Elmhurst wasn’t about combating COVID-19. It was about combating a culture of neglect and malpractice.”
—Katherine Alexa, RN, Elmhurst

“Self-sacrifice is not a new concept for this courageous combat veteran. She put it all on the line for her country while abroad, and now, her mission is here at home. She has broken a deafening silence in an effort to expose the corrupt intermingling of big health care, big pharma, and big government, which has infiltrated the system right down to the bedside in the epicenter of the pandemic. If we truly desire to heal, we must first be willing to acknowledge the corruption that exists within the industry and allow the shocking and uncomfortable truth to be a catalyst for change.
—S. Adams, MSN, NP-C
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface excerpt from Undercover Epicenter Nurse

[Ed. Note: The full Preface by J.B. Handley, expanding on all his points, is found in the book—complete with all source footnotes.]

For anyone willing to look, there are so many facts that tell the true story of COVID-19. Can you handle the truth? It goes a little something like this: Knowing what we know today about COVID-19’s Infection Fatality Rate, asymmetric impact by age and medical condition, non-transmissibility by asymptomatic people and in outdoor settings, near-zero fatality rate for children, and the basic understanding of viruses through Farr’s Law, locking down society was a boneheaded policy decision so devastating that historians may judge it as the all-time worst decision ever made.
Worse, as these clear facts have become available, many policymakers haven’t shifted their positions, despite the fact that every hour under any stage of lockdown has a domino effect of devastation to society. Meanwhile, the media—with a few notable exceptions—are oddly silent on all the good news. To put it simply, for the time being we’re screwed.
Luckily, an unexpected group of heroes across the political landscape—many of them doctors and scientists—has emerged to tell the truth, despite facing extreme criticism and censorship from an angry mob desperate to continue fighting an imaginary war. Erin Marie Olszewski is one of those heroes.
In this book, Erin lays out the straight facts. A brave nurse, veteran, and mother, she goes far beyond the cold data of any study to share the human tragedy that she witnessed inside of New York City’s COVID-19 epicenter, Elmhurst Hospital.
As you read her story, and consider what you know so far, who should you believe? You may be reading this in lockdown. You may be reading it on a beach if you’re lucky enough to be in a reopened state. With the media, government, and your Facebook feed filling your head with conflicting information, how can you cut through the noise to hear the truth of what real Americans like Erin are seeing on the front lines? Her words—and her evidence—speak for themselves. I invite you to read them and digest it all with an open mind.
Erin is a warrior for the truth, but she alone cannot tell this entire story. Her experience is an integral part of the true story of COVID-19. I will leave her to tell you about the negligence, greed, and mismanagement that she has experienced at Elmhurst Hospital. In the meantime, allow me to share several other undisputed facts—proven by scientific research studies and expert analysis—that constitute the setting for her powerful tale.

Fact #1: The Infection Fatality Rate for COVID-19 is somewhere between 0.07–0.20 percent, in line with seasonal flu.
The Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) math of ANY new virus ALWAYS declines over time as more data becomes available, as any virologist could tell you. In the early days of COVID-19—where we only had data from China—there was a fear that the IFR could be as high as 3.4 percent, which would indeed be cataclysmic.
On April 17, the first study was published by Stanford researchers that should have ended all lockdowns immediately, as the scientists reported that their research “implies that the infection is much more widespread than indicated by the number of confirmed cases” and pegged the IFR as low as 0.12–0.2 percent. The researchers also speculated that the final IFR, as more data emerged, would likely “be lower.” For context, seasonal flu has an IFR of 0.1 percent. Smallpox? 30 percent. COVID-19, to reiterate? 0.12 to 0.2 percent.

Fact #2: The risk of dying from COVID-19 is much higher than the average IFR for older people and those with comorbidities, and much lower than the average IFR for younger healthy people, and nearing zero for children. (Source: CDC)
In January 2020, Los Angeles had an influenza outbreak that was killing children. The LA Times reported that “an unlikely strain of influenza has sickened and killed an unusually high number of young people in California this flu season.” COVID-19 is the opposite of that. Stanford’s Dr. Ioannidis said, “Compared to almost any other cause of disease that I can think of, it’s really sparing young people.”
Italy reported in May that 96 percent of Italians who died from COVID-19 had “other illnesses” and were, on average, eighty years old.

Fact #3: People infected with COVID-19 who are asymptomatic (which is most people) do NOT spread COVID-19.
On January 13, 2020, a twenty-two-year-old female with a history of congenital heart disease went to the emergency room of Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital complaining of a variety of symptoms common to people with her condition, including pulmonary hypertension and shortness of breath due to atrial septal defect (hole in the heart). Little did she know her case would set off a cascade of events resulting in a recently published paper that should have ended all lockdowns around the world simultaneously.
Three days into her hospital stay, her condition was improving. Routine tests were run, and to the clinician’s alarm and surprise, she tested positive for COVID-19. As the physicians noted, “the patient had no fever, sore throat, myalgia, or other symptoms associated with virus infection.” Said differently, she was completely asymptomatic for COVID-19.

Fact #4: Emerging science shows no spread of COVID-19 in the community.
We just learned that asymptomatic people infected with COVID-19 are very unlikely to be able to spread the infection to others. Emerging and published science shows transmission of COVID-19 in retail establishments is extremely unlikely, as well. Professor Hendrik Streeck from the University of Bonn is leading a study in Germany on the hard-hit region of Heinsberg, and his conclusions, from laboratory work already completed, is very clear: "There is no significant risk of catching the disease when you go shopping. Severe outbreaks of the infection were always a result of people being closer together over a longer period of time.”

Fact #5: Published science shows COVID-19 is NOT spread outdoors
No. Just no.
In a study titled “Indoor Transmission of SARS-CoV-2” and published on April 2, 2020, scientists studied outbreaks of three or more people in three hundred and twenty separate towns in China over a five-week period beginning in January 2020. The goal was to determine WHERE outbreaks started: in the home, workplace, outside, or wherever. What’d they discover? Almost eighty percent of outbreaks happened in the home environment. The rest happened in crowded buses and trains.

Fact #6: Science shows masks are ineffective to halt the spread of COVID-19, and the WHO recommends they should only be worn by healthy people if treating or living with someone with a COVID-19 infection.
In March, the World Health Organization announced that masks should only be worn by healthy people if they are taking care of someone infected with COVID-19. The guideline stated:
“If you do not have any respiratory symptoms such as fever, cough, or runny nose, you do not need to wear a mask. Masks should only be used by health care workers, caretakers, or by people who are sick with symptoms of fever and cough.”

Fact #7: There’s no science to support the magic of a six-foot barrier.
Iceland has already made the two-meter (six-foot) rule optional. The reason for the apparently random recommendation to keep six feet of distance from your fellow citizens during the pandemic dates back to 1930. Back then, scientists established that droplets of liquid released by coughs or sneezes will either evaporate quickly in the air or be dragged by gravity down to the ground. And the majority of those droplets, they reckoned, would land within one to two meters. That is why it is said the greatest risks come from having the virus coughed at you from close range or from touching a surface—and then your face—that someone coughed onto. How conclusive is that?

Fact #8: The idea of locking down an entire society had never been done and has no supportable science, only theoretical modeling.
In fact, the first time the idea was ever raised to lock down everyone was in 2006, in a paper titled “Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza.” The paper detailed “how social contact network-focused mitigation can be designed” and modeled various outcomes based on how people behaved. At the time, cooler heads prevailed and dismissed the ideas in the paper, as represented this critique from Dr. D.A. Henderson, the man who led the public effort to eradicate smallpox. According to the New York Times, “Dr. Henderson was convinced that it made no sense to force schools to close or public gatherings to stop. Teenagers would escape their homes to hang out at the mall. School lunch programs would close, and impoverished children would not have enough to eat. Hospital staffs would have a hard time going to work if their children were at home.”

Fact #9: The epidemic models of COVID-19 have been disastrously wrong, and both the practice of modeling and the people behind it have a terrible history.
While many disease models have been used during the COVID-19 pandemic, two have been particularly influential in the public policy of lockdowns: that of Imperial College (UK) and that of the IHME (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Washington, USA). They’ve both proven to be unmitigated disasters.

Fact #10: The data shows that lockdowns have NOT had an impact on the course of the disease.
This is certainly the fact that people will have the hardest time with: Who wants to believe that all this suffering and isolation was for no reason? However, there are more than enough states and countries that didn't lockdown, or locked down for a much shorter time, or in a much different manner, to provide sufficient data. Perhaps the simplest explanation for why lock downs have been ineffective is the easiest: COVID-19 was in wide circulation much earlier than experts thought. This alone would explain why lockdowns have been so ineffective, but whatever the final explanation, let’s see what the data says.

Fact #11: Florida locked down late, opened early, and is doing fine, despite predictions of doom.
The best article I have read about Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis comes from the National Review on May 20. I was pleasantly surprised by what a rational student of history Governor DeSantis was, as he explained, “One of the things that bothered me throughout this whole time was, I researched the 1918 pandemic, ’57, ’68, and there were some mitigation efforts done in May 1918, but never just a national-shutdown type deal. There was really no observed experience about what the negative impacts would be on that.”

Fact #12: New York’s above-average death rate appears to be driven by a fatal policy error combined with aggressive intubations.
This brings us to the crux of Erin’s incredible investigation. The evidence you are about to review is irrefutable. Even if you don’t believe her at first, others are reaching similar conclusions.
Massive deaths of elderly individuals in nursing homes, nosocomial infections, and overwhelmed hospitals may explain the very high fatality seen in specific locations in Northern Italy, New York, and New Jersey. A very unfortunate decision of the governors in New York and New Jersey was to have COVID-19 patients sent to nursing homes.

Fact #13: Public health officials and disease epidemiologists do NOT consider the other negative societal consequences of lockdowns.
If you asked me for a suggestion for how to lose a few pounds and I said, “Stop eating or drinking anything,” would you take my advice? It would work to achieve your goals, but you may not like the side effects. That’s basically what has happened here. Rather than being ONE input on policy, public health officials were handed the keys to the convertible without their license, and off they sped!

Fact #14: There is a predictive model for the viral arc of COVID-19, it’s called Farr’s Law, and it was discovered over one hundred years ago.
Dr. Lass, in the interview mentioned above, also made a point that we already knew, long before the lock downs, how COVID-19 was likely to behave, because we’ve been dealing with new viruses since the dawn of man.
If you look at the coronavirus wave on a graph, you will see that it looks like a spike. Coronavirus comes very fast, but it also goes away very fast. The influenza wave is shallow, as it takes three months to pass, but coronavirus takes only one month.

Fact #15: The lockdowns will cause more death and destruction than COVID-19 ever did.
My final fact is the most depressing. Of course, it’s impossible today to find all the data to show how destructive unnecessary lockdowns have been, but many people are already trying. Economically, the costs to the United States will be measure in the multitrillions. It didn't have to be this way: Sweden just reported that GDP grew in their first quarter!

Fact #16: All these phased reopenings are utter nonsense with no science to support them, but they will all be declared a success.
Still waiting for your Phase 1 or Phase 2 reopening? Trust me, whoever conjured up your state’s plan is quite literally making things up as they go along. Given the extreme range of plans taking place—even in neighboring counties—the odds that they have ANYTHING to do with the arc of the virus is exactly ZERO, but you already knew that if you read this far.

—J.B. Handley
June 23, 2020 --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08B6FJXLC
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hot Books (August 18, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 18, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 7778 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 242 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #381,143 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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- #48 in Internal Medicine Critical Care
- #48 in Physician & Patient Medical Ethics

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Joan Edelstein

Reviewed by a Professor of Nursing

Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2020

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There is no doubt that mistakes were made when New York City was the epicenter of the Coronavirus pandemic. The country was not prepared for a pandemic any more than Italy was prepared, as we all watched people dying in care facilities and at home during the surge in Italy. We know, for example, there have been terrible racial disparities. At the same time, nursing must be evidence-based, as should a book about care of patients. This is essential for credibility. Nowhere in this book are any references provided to back anything other than anecdotal claims.

This book starts with a 50 page preface by JB Handley, an anti-vaccine friend of Erin's (as is her lawyer, Kevin Barry). Handley, a private-equity entrepreneur in private consumer companies, is not an expert on health care or COVID. The preface, according to Erin, is filled with "FACTS" e.g., “People infected with COVID-19 who are asymptomatic (which are most people) do NOT spread COVID-19.” and “Emerging science shows no spread of COVID-19 in the community.” Those statement have no scientific basis, are blatantly false and have been thoroughly debunked by David Gorski, MD, PhD on Science Based Medicine.

Chapter 1 is a compelling memoir about Erin’s unhappy childhood with many photos. While this is relevant to ultimately working in nursing, it’s unclear how this is related to her description of events at Elmhurst.

Chapter 2 is about Erin’s unhappy time in the military, where the government lied. As a veteran of the Vietnam Era, I have to say I found her description of how she was treated as an enlisted person to be very believable. I can't speak to her experiences in Iraq.

Chapter 3 is all about how Erin became anti-vaccine “I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I'm an ex-vaxxer." touting her AV activism. In a chapter devoted to anti-vaccine activism, her "everything is about profits" theme that informs her NYC 'expose' is presented. She also later doesn't see how her anti-vaccine activism is relevant. The fact the she spent an entire chapter in the same book on that activism makes it relevant.

Chapter 4 finally brings us to NYC, halfway through the book. Erin went with an agenda, bragging about bringing spyglasses, for $10,000/week. As Erin often says, follow the money. Reading her descriptions makes it clear that Erin does not understand nursing education, medical education, COVID-19, NYC, chain of command, or HIPAA. Examples:

Nursing education: Erin touts her experience as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), and explains the typical way to become a nurse is CNA->LPN->ADN->BSN (p152). It's not. She provides no evidence to support this theory. I have taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The majority of the thousands of nursing students I have had have not been CNAs or LPNs. Registered nursing has several levels of entry into practice, including the ADN, BSN, and Masters entry programs. We used to have hospital-based diploma programs. In fact, I’m a graduate of t the Bellevue School of Nursing (1968). The first nursing program in the country based on the Nightingale Plan, Bellevue was a diploma program at a hospital that is part of the NYC Health and Hospital System that Erin denounces. "Most good nurses start out as CNAs," (p151) "That's where it all begins for most nurses" (p152) - neither is true - and then counts her CNA experience as nursing, which it's not, saying she has 18 years of experience (p269) when she has 3 years experience as a Registered Nurse. Erin became a Practical Nurse in 2014 and was not a registered nurse until 2017.

Medical education: "Most interns and residents have never even been at a patient's bedside before, never set foot into a patient's room-not to mention, they've never done so during a pandemic." Interns and residents have, indeed, worked with patients. Medical students start clinical rotations in their 3rd or 4th year, though many programs are starting in the first year. Erin never set foot into a patient's room during a pandemic before arriving at Elmhurst, either. She refers to interns, residents, and actual doctors, clearly not understanding that interns and residents ARE actual doctors.

HIPAA: "HIPAA includes a whistleblower provision that protects people like me who need to use examples of patient care to expose wrongdoing." (p244). Those protections are limited to an attorney, healthcare oversight agency or public health authority, and healthcare accreditation organization. Not only do these exceptions not apply to media interviews, courts have punished some whistleblowers for perceived carelessness with HIPAA protected PHI.

Chain of command: I have to question why Erin hasn't complained to an appropriate agency. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals takes complaints seriously, as do Boards of Registered Nursing and Medical Boards. Those would be the appropriate agencies for filing complaints, where HIPAA protections for whistleblowers would apply, and real action to fix what Erin views as problems could be taken.

Erin describes advocating for patients by trying to convince treating physicians to use Vitamin C, and touts zinc with hydroxychloroquine. I've watched the interview of her with the recorded conversation with an incredibly patient doctor. In the book, she refers to the doctor in Texas as using them successfully. That doctor is the same conspiracy theorist who believes in alien DNA and women's diseases are caused by sex with demons in dreams.

On page 145, Erin describes PPE use when she took care of Ebola patients. The US had a total of 11 cases of Ebola in 2014, the year Erin was first licensed as an LPN in Wisconsin, where there were no cases of Ebola and an LPN would not have been in that ICU.. At the same time, she publicly posted a picture of herself working at Elmhurst in inappropriate PPE, including a mask with lips (photo included).

On page 234 Erin claims a lawsuit by three Alabama nurses against the staffing agency paralleled her experience and quotes parts of the suit to support her own claims. I’ve read the lawsuit. The three nurses claimed they were misled and assigned to areas they were not qualified to work in and working in unsafe conditions e.g., lack of PPE. They did complain about working conditions which were, indeed, awful. At no time did they accuse colleagues of negligence, malpractice, or murder. They did not volunteer with the intent to spy on and mock their colleagues.

One might argue Erin has tapes that prove her accusations. These have been the basis of HIPAA violation complaints against her. Like many anti-vaccine activists, much is taken out of context and/or misinterpreted. Nurse and doctor colleagues have had no opportunity to share their views, which may well be different and supported by documented fact. On page 212 Erin has a photo of someone at what looks like a nurses’ station with the caption “Doctor sleeps soundly after her decision not to code the thirty-seven year old patient who died.” We don’t know if this is a doctor whose patient just died, nor do we know if this was one of Erin’s patients. We haven’t heard the doctor’s side. This is not someone sleeping soundly. It’s someone hunched over a desk, head barely resting on a flat surface. Possibly sobbing. Even if this doctor decided not to code the patient, and may have had a good reason, why would Erin malign someone after such a trauma when on page 213 she has a photo of a nurse (we assume) apparently sleeping upright on a chair with the caption: “How could nurses stand up and fight for their patients at this level of exhaustion?”

Most of Erin's premises can be debunked. As she herself notes, none of the people she worked with have had the opportunity to fact check or refute her claims. This is ultimately a book written by a conspiracy theorist paid $10,000/week plus expenses who intended to show the world how incompetent her fellow professionals were. She accused them, the hospital, and the governor of murder in order to increase her fame. While I was biased going in, I tried to read it with an open mind. Nonetheless, I was appalled at the lack of knowledge, ethics, and professionalism. In addition, Erin clearly didn't have an editor, which was badly needed. This is a fail on professionalism, ethics, and credibility.

683 people found this helpful

Helpful

Helena

Terrible fiction exploiting patients. Zero stars

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2020

Poorly written. Appalling to read about a nurse violating patients privacy and recording them to write a book she had committed to before the trip. Her information has been refuted by doctors, nurses, and staff who worked with her and called her inexperienced.

Unless you’d like to support anti vax nurses taking advantage of people dying in a pandemic, would not buy.

415 people found this helpful

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Peggy

A review from a nurse

Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2020

Verified Purchase

As a retired RN, BSN, CCRN (Critical Care certification), I could not read this book in its entirety (I did struggle through most of it before quitting --I kept thinking it would get better...). The beginning of her story about her dysfunctional family life was very sad. Her enlisting in the armed services was probably an escape but she complained about all the chaos but she brought to the military what she had been doing all her life -- "bringing order to chaos".

The theme throughout the book was her extremely inflated ego! As a PFC she, of course, she knew more than all her drill sergeants because her "test scores were really high" in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, "a test similar to the ACT and SAT". She knew more as a CNA than all the nurses and doctors. As a nurse, she had to tell the interns and residents what to do. At Elmhurst hospital no one knew anything and she had to train them...

And what nurse says "a patient's cardiac dropped"? I assume that she meant blood pressure dropped and the doctor had to come and push "Leabatelol". I assume she means "labetalol" and reading this book I would not want her giving me labetalol IV.

Yes, I have seen many unpleasant, unethical situations and outright errors in my 45 years of bedside nursing in critical care areas. There are better ways to handle these things than getting a pair of glasses that video and audio recorded situations.

I cannot recommend this book on any level. Even on the writing level I have to pan it. Who were her editors?? The language is like a teenage "Valley Girl".

I cannot imagine working alongside such an egotistical, boorish nurse!

290 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Truth isn't always easy. Read it!

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2020

Verified Purchase

Ignore the haters and read for yourself! So thankful for Erin and people like her who put their job and life on the line to get truth out! People need to know and this book isn't an easy read but it's an important one!

281 people found this helpful

Helpful

Angie O

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2020

Verified Purchase

What a brave soul for speaking out when the rest of the nation is trying to silence you!
Thank you for sharing this incredible experience with the rest of us, and for continuing to fight for the people!
For those accusing her of violating HIPAA, it is very clearly laid out how she was absolutely NOT.

272 people found this helpful

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ChelleK

They need to be held accountable!

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2020

Thank you Erin for getting this out there! The exact same thing happened in my state as well!

272 people found this helpful

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Kelly D

The truth speakers will always be hated

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2020

A nurse who has risked her career to speak the truth so the patients who had no voice will be heard. Thank you for being brave.

269 people found this helpful

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sweetmama

Truth had some people upset!

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2020

Verified Purchase

Thank you for telling the truth. Obviously truth is not what people I. The hospital wanted because it exposes them. More people need to be brave and tell the truth!

199 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

David Bourke

Why I bought Erin's book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 6, 2020

Verified Purchase

Ms Edelstein's hatchet job persuaded me to buy this book. I'm not going to give her the honorific she features so prominently in her hit-piece because I've only ever met one professor in the medical field who wasn't a complete waste of oxygen incompetent.

Having worked in private medicine in the UK, and witnessed one patient walk in for routine surgery, then leave as a vegetable in a wheelchair after being given the wrong blood, Edelstein and her ilk don't impress me one bit since they are always the people who orchestrate the cover-ups to protect their obscene money-.

Before the current pandemic panto show, doctors had still been found to be the third leading cause of death in the US, years after the death of Dr. Starfield, the author of the original study. Who, ironically, was killed by incompetent doctors herself. Plus ça change.

After November, the gravy train stops running. People like Edelstein will no longer be required. But people like Erin will.

8 people found this helpful

Maria

Worth a read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 14, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book is definitely worth a read as it’s a real eye-opener in understanding how so many people have been listed as a covid death when really it’s just negligence from the hospitals and deaths could have been easily avoided. My own family member here in Uk got put into a covid ward when he was covid negative and ended up catching covid from the hospital at the age of 80. This book talks about that, it tells you what mainstream media is hiding.

The only downside is the way some of it was written. She keeps using the word ‘like’ and saying ‘but I mean like’ which can be very frustrating to read at times.

Autistic Shill

This is ultimately a book written by a conspiracy theorist paid $10,000/week plus expenses

Reviewed in Canada on August 30, 2020

Verified Purchase

There is no doubt that mistakes were made when New York City was the epicenter of the Coronavirus pandemic. The country was not prepared for a pandemic any more than Italy was prepared, as we all watched people dying in care facilities and at home during the surge in Italy. We know, for example, there have been terrible racial disparities. At the same time, nursing must be evidence-based, as should a book about care of patients. This is essential for credibility. Nowhere in this book are any references provided to back anything other than anecdotal claims.

This book starts with a 50 page preface by JB Handley, an anti-vaccine friend of Erin's (as is her lawyer, Kevin Barry). Handley, a private-equity entrepreneur in private consumer companies, is not an expert on health care or COVID. The preface, according to Erin, is filled with "FACTS' e.g., “People infected with COVID-19 who are asymptomatic (which are most people) do NOT spread COVID-19.” and “Emerging science shows no spread of COVID-19 in the community.” Those statement have no scientific basis, are blatantly false and have been thoroughly debunked by David Gorski, MD, PhD on Science Based Medicine.

Chapter 1 is a compelling memoir about Erin’s unhappy childhood with many photos. While this is relevant to ultimately working in nursing, it’s unclear how this is related to her description of events at Elmhurst.

Chapter 2 is about Erin’s unhappy time in the military, where the government lied. As a veteran of the Vietnam Era, I have to say her description of how she was treated as an enlisted person to be very believable. I can't speak to her experiences in Iraq.

Chapter 3 is all about how Erin became anti-vaccine “I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I'm an ex-vaxxer." touting her AV activism. In a chapter devoted to anti-vaccine activism, her "everything is about profits" theme that informs her NYC 'expose' is presented. She also later doesn't see how her aanti-vaccine activism is relevant. The fact the she spent an entire chapter in the same book on that activism makes it relevant.

Chapter 4 finally brings us to NYC, halfway through the book. Erin went with an agenda, bragging about bringing spyglasses, for $10,000/week. As Erin often says, follow the money. Reading her descriptions makes it clear that Erin does not understand nursing education, medical education, COVID-19, NYC, chain of command, or HIPAA. Examples:

Nursing education: Erin touts her experience as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), and explains the typical way to become a nurse is CNA->LPN->ADN->BSN (p152). It's not. She provides no evidence to support this theory. I have taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The majority of the thousands of nursing students I have had have not been CNAs or LPNs. Registered nursing has several levels of entry into practice, including the ADN, BSN, and Masters entry programs. We used to have hospital-based diploma programs. I’m a graduate of the Bellevue School of Nursing. The first nursing program in the country based on the Nightingale Plan, Bellevue was a diploma program at a hospital that is part of the NYC Health and Hospital System that Erin denounces. "Most good nurses start out as CNAs," (p151) "That's where it all begins for most nurses" (p152) - neither is true - and then counts her CNA experience as nursing, which it's not, saying she has 18 years of experience (p269) when she has 3 years experience as a Registered Nurse. Erin became a Practical Nurse in 2014 and was not a registered nurse until 2017.

Medical education: "Most interns and residents have never even been at a patient's bedside before, never set foot into a patient's room-not to mention, they've never done so during a pandemic." Interns and residents have, indeed, worked with patients. Medical students start clinical rotations in their 3rd or 4th year, though many programs are starting in the first year. Erin never set foot into a patient's room during a pandemic before arriving at Elmhurst, either. She refers to interns, residents, and actual doctors. Interns and residents ARE actual doctors.

HIPAA: "HIPAA includes a whistleblower provision that protects people like me who need to use examples of patient care to expose wrongdoing." (p244). Those protections are limited to an attorney, healthcare oversight agency or public health authority, and healthcare accreditation organization. Not only do these exceptions not apply to media interviews, courts have punished some whistleblowers for perceived carelessness with HIPAA protected PHI.

Chain of command: I had to question why Erin hasn't complained to an appropriate agency. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals takes complaints seriously, as do the Board of Registered Nursing and the Medical Board. Those would be the appropriate agencies to file complaints, where HIPAA protections for whistleblowers would apply and real action to fix what Erin views as problems could be taken.

Erin describes advocating for patients by trying to convince treating physicians to use Vitamin C and touts zinc with hydroxychloroquine. She refers to the doctor in Texas - the conspiracy theorist who believes in alien DNA and that women's diseases are caused by sex with demons in dreams.

On page 145, Erin describes PPE use when she took care of Ebola patients. The US had a total of 11 cases of Ebola in 2014, the year Erin was first licensed as an LPN in Wisconsin, where there were no cases of Ebola and an LPN would not have been in that ICU.. At the same time, she posted a picture of herself working at Elmhurst in inappropriate PPE, including a mask with lips.

On page 234 Erin claims a lawsuit by three Alabama nurses against the staffing agency paralleled her experience and quotes parts of the suit to support her own claims. I’ve read the lawsuit. The three nurses claimed they were misled and assigned to areas they were not qualified to work in and unsafe conditions e.g., lack of PPE. They did complain about working conditions, which were, indeed awful. At no time did they accuse colleagues of negligence, malpractice, or murder. They did not volunteer with the intent to spy on and mock their colleagues.

One might argue Erin has tapes that prove her accusations. These have been the basis of HIPAA violation complaints. Like many anti-vaccine activists, much is taken out of context and/or misinterpreted. Nurse and doctor colleagues have had no opportunity to share their views, which may well be different, and supported by fact. On page 212 Erin has a photo of someone at what looks like a nurses’ station with the caption “Doctor sleeps soundly after her decision not to code the thirty-seven year old patient who died.” We don’t know if this is a doctor whose patient just died nor do we know if this was one of Erin’s patients. We haven’t heard the doctor’s side. This is not someone sleeping soundly. It’s someone hunched over a desk, head barely resting on a flat surface. Maybe sobbing. Even if this doctor decided not to code him, and may have had a good reason, why would Erin malign someone after such a trauma when on page 213 she has a photo of a nurse (we assume) apparently sleeping upright on a chair with the caption: “How could nurses stand up and fight for their patients at this level of exhaustion?”

Most of Erin's premises can be debunked. As she, herself, notes none of the people she worked with have had the opportunity to fact check or refute her claims. This is ultimately a book written by a conspiracy theorist paid $10,000/week plus expenses who intended to show the world how incompetent her fellow professionals were. She accused them, the hospital, and the governor of murder in order to increase her fame. While I was biased going in, I tried to read it with an open mind. Nonetheless, I was appalled at the lack of knowledge, ethics, and professionalism. In addition, Erin clearly didn't have an editor, which was badly needed. This is a fail on professionalism, ethics, and credibility.