Occupational Safety

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Anchor lead: Many healthcare workers have died in this pandemic, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Almost 3000 healthcare workers in the US had died of Covid-19 at the end of December 2020, Kaiser Health News reports. Patricia Davidson, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, says she can only imagine what an outcry there would be if 3000 construction workers or long haul truckers had died.

Davidson: There has to be an acknowledgement from a national perspective from an occupational health and safety issue that there are real issues for all healthcare workers. Around the nation, healthcare workers, from the very junior, less trained to the professors have been losing their lives. So we really need to take a strong look at occupational health and safety in this context of the pandemic. And as everyone says this is not going to be the last.  :28

Davidson says some healthcare systems have fared much better than others in protecting their workers, yet standards and practices need to be implemented to help keep everyone safe. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.