If I could give a 3-minute presentation to every board of every hospital in the world:
Five Simple Questions: Answer yes or no:
Does wearing a respirator protect healthcare workers from viral infections?
Do infected healthcare workers with flu, RSV, COVID and other viral illnesses infect patients?
Do nosocomial infections harm patients and impair recovery?
Does this facility's mission commit us to protect the health of those we serve?
Will we implement a masking policy immediately?
@augieray I've told this story before and it still annoys me.
Late 2024 I was in the local hospital's radiation oncology department as support person for a cancer patient. She & I masked up. We noted that only a few people in the waiting room were masked.
When we went in for her consultation with the oncologist she was not masked and she asked why we were.
I replied that we were fine but we had masked up because we knew that cancer patients were often immune compromised & if we were infectious but pre-symptomatic we didn't want to risk infecting anyone.
[[Long pause]]
She put a mask on.
Furrfu!
Augie Ray
Julia Clement