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Joint Health Statement For First Meeting Of States Parties

May 5, 2022 ICAN Australia. , ,
Representing physicians, nurses, public health professionals, and medical students worldwide, we speak with a united voice on the urgent need to eliminate nuclear weapons as a matter of global health and survival. Updated evidence on the catastrophic consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, the acute and growing danger of their use, and the impossibility of any effective humanitarian and health response following nuclear explosions on populations, should underpin the work of the upcoming 1st Meeting of States Parties (1MSP) of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The TPNW is based upon a body of indisputable evidence, documented by scientists, health professionals, and experts in crisis management and response, that the consequences of nuclear weapons use are catastrophic, global, and without remedy.

Union Wins Two Elections Among Clinical Staff At McLean Hospital

April 28, 2022 Mark Herz, Portside. , ,
Belmont, Massachusetts - Local union organizers have scored another victory at McLean Hospital in Belmont, after winning two votes on Friday to unionize all hourly clinical staff like nurses and mental health specialists who assist with patient care. In September, research assistants at the nationally prominent Harvard-affiliated psychiatric treatment and research institution formed a union — the first, the organizers say, in the hospital’s long history. All hourly clinical staff, excluding those with advanced degrees, will be part of the union if Friday's votes are confirmed. Through the effort, union organizers from AFSCME Council 93, which represents some 45,000 mostly state and municipal workers in New England, said about one-third of McLean’s approximately 2,400 employees may soon be unionized.

More Than 200 Health Journals Call For Urgent Action On Climate Crisis

September 6, 2021 PA Media, The Guardian. , , ,
More than 200 health journals worldwide are publishing an editorial calling on leaders to take emergency action on climate change and to protect health. The British Medical Journal said it is the first time so many publications have come together to make the same statement, reflecting the severity of the situation. The editorial, which is being published before the UN general assembly and the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow this November, says: “Ahead of these pivotal meetings, we – the editors of health journals worldwide – call for urgent action to keep average global temperature increases below 1.5C, halt the destruction of nature, and protect health. “Health is already being harmed by global temperature increases and the destruction of the natural world, a state of affairs health professionals have been bringing attention to for decades.

Medical Technicians’ Strike In Oregon Could Be The First Of Many

March 5, 2021 Lizzie Mulvey, Al Jazeera. , , ,
As a registered respiratory therapist, Rachel Maida spent the past year caring for COVID-19 patients at St Charles Medical Center in Bend, Oregon in the United States – challenging work that has taken both a physical and mental toll on the 48-year-old. The powered air purifying respirator (PAPR) she wears for 12 hours a day causes headaches, she said, and her mask leaves bruises on her face. She loves her job, but “it’s exhausting, day in and day out,” Maida told Al Jazeera, explaining that earning between $25 and $35 per hour, she is not compensated enough. That is why nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic, Maida and more than 150 other medical technicians – a group of highly skilled healthcare professionals who typically don’t have the labour protections afforded to nurses and doctors – have been negotiating their first union contract as part of the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals (OFNHP).

“Those Of Us Who Don’t Die Are Going To Quit”

January 1, 2021 J. David McSwane, Pro Publica. , , ,
Nurse Kristen Cline was working a 12-hour shift in October at the Royal C. Johnson Veterans Memorial Hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, when a code blue rang through the halls. A patient in an isolation room was dying of a coronavirus that had raged for eight months across the country before it made the state the brightest red dot in a nation of hot spots. Cline knew she needed to protect herself before entering the room, where a second COVID-19 patient was trembling under the covers, sobbing. She reached for the crinkled and dirty N95 mask she had reused for days. In her post-death report, Cline described how the patient fell victim to a hospital in chaos. The crash cart and breathing bag that should have been in the room were missing.

Yuma Hospital Fires ER Doctor For Talking About COVID-19

December 11, 2020 Jamie Landers, Arizona Republic. , , ,
Dr. Cleavon Gilman, a well-known emergency-medicine physician, has been asked not to return to his work at Yuma Regional Medical Center for his social media posts about the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic in Arizona, according to him and his staffing agency. "What I don't understand about this is I have been advocating for Arizona; I have been calling for a mask mandate, the closure of schools and indoor dining," Gilman told The Arizona Republic. "I did all of this because we are seeing an unprecedented number of cases. This is my third surge — I know how this ends."

‘This Strike Is A Fight For Our Lives’

December 3, 2020 Jeff Schuhrke, In These Times. , , ,
As a strike wave sweeps the U.S. health­care indus­try amid the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, 700 front­line work­ers at 11 Chica­go-area nurs­ing homes have been on the pick­et lines since Novem­ber 23.  Pri­mar­i­ly Black and Lati­na women, the strik­ing work­ers are mem­bers of SEIU Health­care Illi­nois & Indi­ana and include cer­ti­fied nurs­ing assis­tants (CNAs), dietary aides, house­keep­ers and laun­dry work­ers. They are fight­ing for at least $15 an hour, haz­ard pay and ade­quate per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE).

As Racism Plagues Health Care, Unions Offer A Treatment

November 23, 2020 Alex J. Rouhandeh, The American Prospect. , , ,
Like many nursing homes across the country, the Genesis HealthCare center in Greenville, Rhode Island, primarily houses white residents and employs people of color. Adelina Ramos, who’s Cape Verdean, works at the center as a certified nursing assistant and faces a number of challenges common to the caregiving profession. Each day, she cares for 11 dementia patients on her own, with that number sometimes rising to 18 if a co-worker can’t come in. The job comes with long hours on her feet and the occasional risk of physical harm when dealing with aggressive patients.

The Enraging Deja Vu Of A Third Coronavirus Wave

November 14, 2020 Caroline Chen, ProPublica. , , ,
As a health reporter covering the pandemic, I’ve experienced too many moments of deja vu. This summer, as the virus swept through the South, news footage of overwhelmed hospitals in Houston turning away ambulances recalled similar scenes from March and April in New York City. Now, we’re in the so-called third wave of the pandemic, with the virus slamming into Midwestern states, and this week, Dr. Gregory Schmidt, associate chief medical officer at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, said his colleagues are converting 16 hospital beds into new ICU beds in anticipation of an influx of COVID-19 patients.

COVID-19 Cases Among Health Care Workers Under-Reported

October 1, 2020 Kristian Hernandez, Fort Worth Star Telegram. , , ,
Fiana Tulip spent the last 10 weeks trying to figure out how her mother, a health care worker in Dallas, contracted and died of COVID-19. Isabelle Papadimitriou, 64, was a respiratory therapist at the Baylor Scott & White Institute for Rehabilitation. She died on July 4, one week after contracting the novel coronavirus. Tulip said she learned after talking with her mother’s colleagues and reading her journals and text messages that the hospital failed to alert her mother and other staff members at the rehabilitation center that one of the patients had tested positive for COVID-19.

During COVID-19, The Risk To Health Care Workers Has Never Been Greater

August 17, 2020 By Sam Pizzigati, Inequality. , , ,
If you happen to provide health care services to actual Covid-19 patients — as a nurse or a doctor, an orderly or a physician’s assistant — this has been the year from hell. Amid the worst worldwide pandemic in over a century, you’ve been working long, intense, chaotic hours. You’ve watched patients die at rates unimaginable just six months ago. You’ve watched colleagues die. You’ve worried that you may be bringing death home to your families. If you work in health care but don’t interact with pandemic patients, the months since March haven’t exactly been easy street either. In April alone, 1.4 million health care workers lost their jobs, as virus-free Americans delayed and cancelled appointments and elective procedures. If, on the other hand, you swivel your day away in a corporate health care executive suite, these difficult and horrific months of Covid-19 have been among the most rewarding — financially — you’ve ever seen.

Nobody Accurately Tracks Health Care Workers Lost To COVID-19

August 3, 2020 By Nina Martin, ProPublica. , , ,
Anesthesiologist Claire Rezba, scrolling through the news on her phone, was dismayed. “I felt like her sacrifice was really great and her child’s sacrifice was really great, and she was just this anonymous woman, you know? It seemed very trivializing.” For days, Rezba would click through Google, searching for a name, until in late March, the news stories finally supplied one: Diedre Wilkes. And almost without realizing it, Rezba began to keep count. The next name on her list was world-famous, at least in medical circles: James Goodrich, a pediatric neurosurgeon in New York City and a pioneer in the separation of twins conjoined at the head. One of his best-known successes happened in 2016, when he led a team of 40 people in a 27-hour procedure to divide the skulls and detach the brains of 13-month-old brothers. Rezba, who’d participated in two conjoined-twins cases during her residency, had been riveted by that saga. Goodrich’s death on March 30 was a gut-punch; “it just felt personal.” Clearly, the coronavirus was coming for health care professionals, from the legends like Goodrich to the ones like Wilkes who toiled out of the spotlight and, Rezba knew, would die there.

Humanity Protests Against The Crimes Of Death

August 1, 2020 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , ,
On 23 July, World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the world now has 15 million people infected by COVID-19. ‘The pandemic has disrupted the lives of billions of people. Many have been at home for months’, he said. The trauma of the Great Lockdown is taking a serious psycho-social toll. ‘It’s completely understandable that people want to get on with their lives’, Dr. Ghebreyesus said. ‘But we will not go back to the “old normal”. The pandemic has already changed the way we live our lives.

Nurse Strike Wave Grows

July 12, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. , , ,
As the country undergoes a severe surge of COVID cases, many hospitals are still short of PPE. Nurses across the country went on strike this week demanding these vital protections.  This week, nurses at the AMITA Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet, Ill. continued the strike they began on Saturday. In response, the hospital has even brought in “scab replacement” nurses to keep the hospital staffed.  The nurses report making progress at the bargaining table and feel confident they are close to a deal.  “It’s getting better,” union leader Pat Meade told the Joliet Herald-News, but she warned that they gave up “so much” in the deal as well.   For more, head to the Joliet Herald-News. 

#WhiteCoatsForBlackLives Wants Racial Justice In Medicine

July 11, 2020 Kim Brown, The Real News. , , ,
In the weeks since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, there have been daily sustained protests across the country advocating for the equality and liberation of vulnerable and marginalized communities, particularly that of Black people. One such protest came from the medical community. If you search the hashtag White Coats For Black Lives, what you’ll find is a smattering of media, ranging from videos to photos, to outright statements acknowledging and yet decrying racism that exists within the medical field with statements and pledges to do better and help to alleviate this issue. Joining us today to discuss this is Randi Abramson, M.D. She is the Chief Medical Officer for an organization in Washington, D.C. called Bread For The City, where their mission is to help low-income district residents empower their communities through various means of aid.
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