Inside CDC, Shooting Adds to Trauma as Workers Describe Projects, Careers in Limbo
CDC workers whose jobs have been reinstated after dizzying Trump administration disruptions say they remain stuck in a budgetary, political, and professional limbo. Their work includes major agency priorities such as HIV testing and monitoring, as well as work at the nation’s leading sexually transmitted infections lab. And while employees are back, many projects have […]
We Work The Night Shift. Here Are Our Tips For Avoiding Exhaustion.
Kaity McKee/TikTok; Claire Murashima/TikTok; Sarah Maria Awang/TikTok Night shift workers in health care, media and the service industry share their top tips for surviving an overnight schedule. While the rest of us are sleeping, millions of Americans are clocking in each evening to work night shifts. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, around 10% […]
Is There No High-Touch Surface in Hospitals Free of Microbial Contamination?
Swabs taken from coffeemakers in German hospital offices and break rooms, and in workers’ homes, tested positive for several important pathogens, researchers found. “Among the eight genera of ‘medically relevant’ Gram-negative species detected, 81% were found in coffeemakers at the hospital,” according to Sarah Victoria Walker, MD, of University Hospital Cologne in Germany, and colleagues. […]
Opinion | ‘It’s Now Health Workers Who Are Suffering’: What We Heard This Week
“It’s now health workers who are suffering.” — Deborah Houry, MD, MPH, the CDC’s chief medical officer, on the rising rates of burnout among healthcare workers. “By 3 days, the majority of children are going to be non-infectious.” — Eran Bendavid, MD, MS, of Stanford University, pinpointing the median duration of infectivity among adolescents with […]
Some Health Workers See Double the Risk for Fatal Drug Overdoses
Certain healthcare workers including registered nurses (RNs) were at increased risk for fatal drug overdoses, a longitudinal study from 2008 to 2019 found. After adjustment for various factors, the risk for overdose death was more than twofold higher for RNs (HR 2.22, 95% CI 1.57-3.13) and social or behavioral health workers (HR 2.55, 95% CI […]
Healthcare Violence Breaks Record; U.K. Limits Puberty Blockers; HPV Discoverer Dies
Note that some links may require subscriptions. Attacks against medical workers and healthcare in conflict zones was the worst on record in 2022, with at least 232 workers killed and 298 kidnapped, a new report from the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition found. At least 728,000 Medicaid recipients have been unenrolled following the end of […]
Addressing Burnout in an Invisible Part of the Health Workforce
Much has been written about the burnout of frontline health workers during the COVID pandemic and what must be done to help them. But what about public health workers — those operating behind the scenes who are also navigating long hours and increased stress? Helping those workers is the idea behind the Public Health-Hope, Equity, […]
Are U.S. Healthcare Workers Better Off Unionized?
Labor unionization among U.S. healthcare workers was low in recent years, even though union membership or coverage was tied to higher weekly earnings and better non-cash benefits, researchers reported. Out of 14,298 healthcare workers surveyed, 13.2% reported union membership or coverage, with no significant trend from 2009 through 2021, according to Xiaojuan Li, PhD, of […]
A Legacy of the Deepwater Horizon Spill: Asthma in Cleanup Workers
Workers who responded to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 were more likely to report incident asthma within a few years, a cohort study found. Those oil spill response and cleanup workers were 60% more likely to report developing asthma in the 1-3 years after the spill compared with non-workers who had been trained […]
Healthcare Workers Who Wear Better Masks Get Less COVID
Healthcare workers had better odds of outmaneuvering SARS-CoV-2 infection while wearing a respirator mask rather than a surgical mask, an observational study showed. Among workers exposed to COVID-19 patients, those who always donned a respirator mask had a lower likelihood of infection (21% vs 35% for those that did not; OR 0.49, 95% CI 0.39-0.61), […]