“Why don’t hospitals have the same requirements that we do?”
One reason is because of a history of HCW complaints about how bulky, hot, and uncomfortable the gear is while trying to care for sick people. (That includes doctors, nurses, respiratory, lab, x-ray, etc. Of course, that was pre-obola. Times have changed now.)
Picture yourself in all that thick, bulky outerwear, trying to start an IV or a central line (chest area IV), or obtain an arterial blood gas, and other fine-motor skills procedures. Before obola, the lighter the gear, the better patient care you could give.
This does not relieve a health care facility from the responsibility of being prepared and making sure their employees are prepared ACCORDING TO STANDARD CDC PRECAUTIONS. But everyone should realize that this Texas hospital is owned by a not-for-profit, faith-based company (and run by a CEO) that contributes mainly to Republicans. The nurses’ union and the media have been given their talking points. They are gearing up their attack to make a single-payer(govt) health care system seem to be the only answer to Ebama’s ultimate Cloward-Piven crisis —[gasp!] a full-blown EBOLA PANDEMIC!! [insert appropriate heart palpitations here]. Marxists are so predictable.
Coming soon... A fancy-azz new fed-gov “Biocontainment Center” near you. But hey... At least we’ll all be safe, right?
It’s a brilliant strategy, actually.
OK.
Let me tell you how the complaints were handled about people wearing full HAZMAT gear saying “It is too HOT AND UNCOMFORTABLE” where handled by OSHA.
I DON’T CARE!
As for the fine motor skills, take a look at what a mechanic has to do to repair a ruptured pressurized acid tank. Now, it isn’t alive, but there are a lot of sharp edges, fine work at times, and in an atmosphere where one breath without an SCBA will burn your lungs.
It really appear the medical field is twenty years behind what HAZMAT requirements are in the private sector. I have had to go in wearing a full “Green Giant” suit into temperatures over 100F. It sucked. Really sucked. Getting killed by CO2 or other nastiness would have sucked worse. Sending a cloud of poisonous gas over a local town would have meant what every engineer tries to avoid. My name in the papers.
We train in high heat with the suits on for long periods of time. Heck, we used to have to play volleyball with them on to get the feel of what happens (your suit blows up like a balloon).
Firestone stopped an outbreak because they had people trained in HAZMAT on site. In the tropics. We train for it all the time in the Midwest dealing all sorts of temperature extremes. Having a healthcare worker complain that it is to hot to wear in an climate controlled environment would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.
Coming soon... A fancy-azz new fed-gov “Biocontainment Center” near you. But hey... At least we’ll all be safe, right?
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The government will take good care of us. Probably even chartered busses. It’ll be like The Hunger Games with contests, prizes, and fancy clothes.