Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-pers...-must-do-protect-health-workers-amid-covid-19
COMMENTARY: What US leaders must do to protect health workers amid COVID-19 supply shortages
Filed Under:
COVID-19
Jesse L. Goodman, MD, MPH, and Nicole Lurie, MD, MSPH
| Mar 26, 2020
Dr. Goodman is a professor medicine and infectious diseases at Georgetown University and is a former chief scientist of the US Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Lurie served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the US Department of Health and Human Services from 2009 to 2017 and is now the strategic advisor to the CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiatives (CEPI).
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Doctors, nurses, first responders, and housekeeping staff are caring for COVID- 19 patients without assurance they can safely do their jobs. Many are jury-rigging homemade masks and respirators or using unproven, possibly unsafe methods to wash and reuse them (prompting a recent European Safety Federation warning), while at the same time we learn about infected healthcare workers becoming patients on ventilators.
These drastic shortages are in large part due to a long-term under-investment in preparedness at all levels, from federal to states to health systems. Many healthcare institutions themselves had not maintained or rebuilt adequate stockpiles after the 2009 H1N1 flu and 2014-16 Ebola crises and maintained dependence on personal protective equipment (PPE) from overseas.
As many frontline providers are already doing, the healthcare system, whether in hospitals, clinics, or urgent care settings, can and must adapt best practices to conserve PPE and other supplies, including implementing administrative controls and workflows. Such conservation and stewardship measures are fundamental pillars of crisis standards of care.
Given the crisis we are now in, however, governors and hospital CEOs should not be left to try to find PPE supplies on their own. The federal government also can do more, and while enhanced production is critically needed, improving the visibility, distribution, and need-based access to what exists in—and enters—the supply chain can play a helpful temporizing role.
Step 1: Complete an online inventory...
COMMENTARY: What US leaders must do to protect health workers amid COVID-19 supply shortages
Filed Under:
COVID-19
Jesse L. Goodman, MD, MPH, and Nicole Lurie, MD, MSPH
| Mar 26, 2020
Dr. Goodman is a professor medicine and infectious diseases at Georgetown University and is a former chief scientist of the US Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Lurie served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the US Department of Health and Human Services from 2009 to 2017 and is now the strategic advisor to the CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Initiatives (CEPI).
_____________________________________
Doctors, nurses, first responders, and housekeeping staff are caring for COVID- 19 patients without assurance they can safely do their jobs. Many are jury-rigging homemade masks and respirators or using unproven, possibly unsafe methods to wash and reuse them (prompting a recent European Safety Federation warning), while at the same time we learn about infected healthcare workers becoming patients on ventilators.
These drastic shortages are in large part due to a long-term under-investment in preparedness at all levels, from federal to states to health systems. Many healthcare institutions themselves had not maintained or rebuilt adequate stockpiles after the 2009 H1N1 flu and 2014-16 Ebola crises and maintained dependence on personal protective equipment (PPE) from overseas.
As many frontline providers are already doing, the healthcare system, whether in hospitals, clinics, or urgent care settings, can and must adapt best practices to conserve PPE and other supplies, including implementing administrative controls and workflows. Such conservation and stewardship measures are fundamental pillars of crisis standards of care.
Given the crisis we are now in, however, governors and hospital CEOs should not be left to try to find PPE supplies on their own. The federal government also can do more, and while enhanced production is critically needed, improving the visibility, distribution, and need-based access to what exists in—and enters—the supply chain can play a helpful temporizing role.
Step 1: Complete an online inventory...