By Stacey Lee, Jacobo Guzman, and Gladys Johnson
Amid federal and state vaccine mandates, labor shortages, and increased requests for remote work flexibility, employers find themselves in an evolving landscape with less latitude over their organization’s workplace. As a result, employers and employees find themselves in conversations about crafting a “new normal” in which worker well-being is featured more prominently than before.
By Molly Levene
“Heroes Work Here.”
Sometimes those three short words make me angry; other times they make me cry.
I was one among thousands of EMTs and paramedics who were deployed to New York through FEMA last year. Having studied public health in school and worked in EMS for over a year, I thought I had seen the extent to which we fail patients; I believed myself disillusioned enough to be prepared for any injustice or chaos I might encounter.
But last April, I quickly learned I was wrong. And when you feel complicit in such deep structural dysfunction, it is incredibly difficult to feel heroic.
This post is the introduction to our newest digital symposium, In Their Own Words: COVID-19 and the Future of the Health Care Workforce. All contributions to the symposium will be available here.
By Stephen Wood
On this day one year ago, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom declared COVID-19 a pandemic, sounding the alarm about the international threat posed by the virus.
Today, one year later, I fear the end is not in sight. In fact, I believe that we are on the precipice of a fourth wave.
The fourth wave will strike the people on the frontlines of this pandemic — health care workers. It will be the effects of the trauma that health care workers entrenched in this pandemic have faced. And it is likely to have significant and lasting effects on our health care system.