Protecting Healthcare Workers During the Coronavirus Pandemic
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Healthcare workers are at the frontline of this coronavirus pandemic, and governments, citizens, and law enforcers must protect their welfare at all costs. If you are a healthcare worker, you should know the options available to you. You should also know what rights you should demand in the middle of this.
Healthcare workers should:
1. Be assured of environmental hygiene, safety, and utmost cleanliness.
Sanitation facilities should be readily available to healthcare workers, in order to ensure that their environments stay clean and that they are well protected from the continuous spread of the disease.
They must have the resources to disinfect hard surfaces. They must have access to personal protective equipment such as masks, gowns, gloves, face shields, and goggles. Rooms and hospitals must have air purifiers and air sanitizers.
They should have facilities available to ensure their personal hygiene regularly. For example, they need resources that let them shower, wash their hands, and change their clothes when moving from patient care to their personal spaces.
2. Ensure their own health and immunity is protected.
Maximum resistance to the virus must be ensured for healthcare workers. They should be given enough time off so they can have enough sleep, eat healthy meals, and take a break from the fatigue and stress of the hospital’s demands.
They should have access to vitamins and other immunity-inducing supplements. They should also be provided testing kits and be given the results of these expeditiously.
3. Be assured of their financial remuneration.
Governments and private owners must ensure that healthcare workers are receiving their paychecks in a timely manner. Some experts can help you with your collections and receivables if you are running a private practice.
Some ambulatory service centers use Fortis ASC Billing Info in order to make the billing and collection process much easier for medical practitioners. You can let them handle these concerns so you can focus on maintaining good health and tending to your patients.
Things move more smoothly when you’re working without worrying about the hampering of your operations due to cash flow complications.
4. Be given legitimate information regarding their patients.
Patients must exercise extreme integrity and full honesty in the disclosure of their medical and travel histories. Withholding vital information exposes healthcare workers to a heightened risk of contracting the virus and subjecting everyone else to this via exposure and contact.
5. Be afforded ample accommodation if quarantine is required.
It may not be avoidable that some workers will need to be quarantined in case of contact with high-risk individuals. Governments and local communities must be able to provide accommodations for quarantine should the need arise. Healthcare workers may need to be distanced from their families until they are tested or confirmed to be immune.
6. Not be discriminated against.
Local authorities and the whole community must enforce anti-discrimination policies for healthcare workers. They should also be given preferential treatment when procuring supplies such as food, medicine, and other essential goods.
These are just some of the many ways we should be protecting our healthcare workers and ensuring their safety during these difficult times. If you are a healthcare worker, know that you have these rights, and there are resources available to you to defend them and make your life just a bit easier during this pandemic.