The other hospital workers on the front lines of the pandemic
As Covid-19 overwhelms several hospital systems around the world, public attention has affixed on doctors and advanced practice providers, like nurse practitioners and physician assistants — the hospital’s leaders on the ground whose medical plans shape the field of battle.
Less visible but no less important, however, is the army of support staff whose daily exposure to Covid-19 patients — from changing their clothes to inserting life-saving ventilator tubes — sometimes exceeds that of the doctors they assist.
In this VOX article, Bianca Frogner, director of the University of Washington’s Center for Health Workforce Studies, acknowledges that support staff are “lower on the totem pole for getting PPE.” Although they are “a critical group” in the fight against Covid-19, she says, they “don’t get a lot of attention.”
Read the full article here.