Lessons and learnings

“We’re over it.” Many of us, health care workers or not, have overtly or covertly expressed this state of being. The ever-changing protocols, the hybrid telehealth clinics, the endless zoom meetings, the cancelled conferences, the restrictions, the distancing, the lack of human touch, the masked smiles. Our day-to-day work and living have fundamentally changed as managers dictate what we can or can’t do. We thought it was going to be a short sprint. It’s turning out to be a marathon that we did not sign up for. And we’re over it. A mutated RNA virus measuring a mere 125 nanometres …

By A/Prof David Allen, Consultant Occupational and Environmental Physician. Hospitals are like small towns or cities with many varied and complex tasks and hazards. These include hazardous substances, manual handling risks, mental health issues, radiation, violence, and infectious diseases like COVID-19. Costs of injuries and illnesses in healthcare can be huge, and a big drag on the bottom line. Good safety management systems can help to control those costs and ensure that scarce funds are not wasted on preventable injuries or illnesses. ISO 45001 is an international standard for a safety management system published by the International Standards Organisation www.iso.org. …

By Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah Intubation is a highly skilled procedure but in the context of COVID-19 it takes nerves of steel. When adjusting a breathing tube down a difficult airway centimetres from the patient’s face, personal safety should be the last thing on your mind. Occupational safety is not an abstract construct for a group of anaesthetists in a Perth hospital who decided, at the start of the pandemic, to take ownership of their respiratory protection. Having dual appointments in major teaching hospitals in Perth and Hong Kong meant that David Kingsbury did not need to look far for best …

By Dr Raina MacIntyre The initial proclamation that SARS-COV-2 was transmitted by droplets and contact was made by the World Health Organization early in the pandemic, without supporting scientific evidence, and at a time when scientific knowledge about the virus was minimal. In one sweep they set the stage for countries everywhere to shift responsibility for healthcare worker safety and simply cite the WHO as the most authoritative source of evidence.  In Australia, experts say airborne transmission is minimal, and providing health workers with airborne precautions may even be dangerous and create a false sense of security. Droplet or airborne …

In the depths of the earth, even today, miners work under harsh conditions. During their 12-hour shifts, they can be exposed to a range of airborne contaminants, including crystalline silica, asbestos, diesel, particulate matter and wielding fumes under hot stifling conditions. Respiratory illnesses attributed to mining include: COPD, silicosis, coal workers pneumoconiosis (CWP), mixed dust pneumoconiosis, metal fume fever and lung cancer. Supporting site management to ensure worker’s exposures are below occupational exposure limits, are occupational hygienists. I spoke to Brett Young, a certified occupational hygienist with over 25 years of regulatory, petroleum and mining experience. He is one of …

In mid-January 2020, Yale New Haven Hospital, a large Yale university affiliated healthcare system, in Connecticut decided that they would provide N95 respirators for their staff seeing COVID suspected and confirmed patients but knew that they would struggle to meet demand. Their solution was to purchase re-usable elastomeric masks initially buying 1,200 immediately, which has now increased to 9,000 for a workforce of 33,000 spread over 7 hospitals with 4400 beds. A/Prof Martinello who championed this decision (discussed in this NY times article) had previously worked in the US Veterans Affairs system and recalled their stockpile of 130,000 elastomeric masks …