Mastodawn

Likely Jan Lukas Mar 11, 2024

Had a hospital clinic appointment today. There's a couple of big signs just inside the entryway, which is great!

I get to the clinic clerk, and after the usual nonsense of none of them bothering to find ways to accommodate patients they "can't hear" through a mask, asks me, "Are you wearing a mask for safety or a health condition?"

Erm, yes? Both!??!!

😳🙄😐

1/x

#abhealth
#AHS
#yeg
#MaskUp
#CovidIsInYourFacilityRightNow
#SafetySignage

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Skip Lacaze Mar 12, 2024

@likelyjanlukas I get my labs and lymphoma treatments at the Stanford Cancer Center. By the end of 2020, they had set up a two-part screening process, with security staff at the main entrance to ensure that you put on a fresh mask and used hand sanitizer and a new reception area inside the entrance with a half dozen people to check in patients, replacing the scores of face-to-face separate reception desks. They had no other jobs and they were very friendly and efficient. We could also check in electronically, which reduced contact even more. Although they let people with durable masks and replaceable filters pass, they required anybody with disposable masks to use a new procedure mask. I tried to decline, saying that I preferred to use my N95 mask, but they wouldn’t allow that, especially once the CDC said procedures masks were sufficient.

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Likely Jan Lukas Mar 12, 2024

@skip_lacaze

Yeah that's part of the whole fundamental evil of bad policy. ☹️

I've been pro-mask from the very beginning but the sole locations I've been treated like crap for it have invariably been large hospital-based clinics, where policy dictated that it was 'use these procedure masks or hit the highway'.

Even the requirement for a 'clean' mask was stupid if the new mask wasn't N95 or better. Do they think we snuggle our faces on healthcare workers? 🙄🙄🙄

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Skip Lacaze

@likelyjanlukas @skip_lacaze I think that part of the reasoning for the policy during the peak of the pandemic, when everybody had to mask to go shopping, was that many people obviously wore the same masks until they were damp and dirty. Also, the contractor-provided security people aren’t really making medical decisions, they are enforcing the rules made by the clinic management. I’m not sure how much discretion I would want to give to people hired to do the kind of work that they do. I think that your own doctor should have been required to evaluate your masking procedure and empowered to provide a sticker or pass that would allow you to get through the doors without the untrained staff having to do anything more than confirming that you already had been okayed.

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Likely Jan Lukas Mar 12, 2024

@skip_lacaze @skip_lacaze

I do understand the choices they were making and enforcing. They were still wrong to do so.

I live in a province with a LOT of resource extraction. According to hospital-policy logic, it must be magic that those folks can work safely with toxic gases in a respirator.

And a security officer ordering a chronically-ill patient to remove protective gear on threat of denying access to treatment providers? DEFINITELY is out of their wheelhouse.