Week 42 Newsletter

(01/25/21) Amid COVID Health Worker Shortage, Foreign-trained Professionals Sit on Sidelines
This article from KHN discusses how foreign-educated doctors, nurses, and other health workers are not being utilized during the pandemic due to licensing and credentialing barriers.

(01/20/21) California Is Overriding Its Limits on Nurse Workloads As Covid Surges
This article examines the problem California is facing with nurses tending to more patients simultaneously than they usually would. This larger workload puts a burden on nurses and violates a California state law that puts restrictions on the nurse-to-patient ratio.

(01/25/21) What’s It Like to Get the Second Dose of a COVID-19 Vaccine? We Asked Health Workers
Some health workers who were among the first to get a COVID-19 vaccine have recently received their second doses. This article from WHYY’s Health Desk discusses interviews with health workers about their experience receiving the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, whether they had any side effects, and what it means for them to be fully vaccinated.

(01/22/21) Four Steps to Help Achieve COVID-19 Vaccine Adoption: How Health Professionals Can Embrace Their Role As Messengers
This Health Affairs blog post suggests 4 strategies that health professionals can use to optimally leverage their position as vaccine messengers. The 4 strategies include: recognizing vaccine hesitancy, learning from disinformation campaigns, avoiding offering false reassurance, and shifting traditional public health messages to community-based, hopeful ones.

(01/22/21) Some Health Care Workers Hesitant to Get COVID-19 Vaccine, Complicating Public Health Efforts
This video from CBS News covers the hesitancy some health care workers are expressing over being vaccinated for COVID-19. An estimated 29% of health care workers say they probably will not or definitely will not be vaccinated, leading experts and organizations to try alternate strategies to build trust and improve vaccination rates among their staff.

(01/21/21) Key Characteristics of Health Care Workers and Implications for COVID-19 Vaccination
This issue brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation provides overviews of demographic characteristics and health insurance coverage for health care workers with direct patient contact. The goal of the analysis is to improve understanding of the makeup of health care workers to better inform vaccination efforts.

(01/19/21) ‘You Can’t Treat If You Can’t Empathize’: Black Doctors Tackle Vaccine Hesitancy
This article from NPR covers the historical reasons behind vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans, as well as how Black physicians and other health care providers can work to improve vaccination rates and treatment of Black patients.

(01/21/21) Program Prescribes Music Lessons to COVID-19 Health Care Workers
This article provides an overview of The Boston Music Teaching Project which enables COVID-19 health care workers to have private music lessons with music teachers in order to give them a bit of a respite from the stress of the pandemic.

(01/15/21) CVS and Walgreens Under Fire for Slow Pace of Vaccination in Nursing Homes
A federal program to send pharmacists from CVS and Walgreens into long-term care facilities to vaccinate staff and patients has reportedly hampered the vaccination process in many of these locations, according to nursing home directors, health care officials, and others. This article from CNN and Kaiser Health News covers these difficulties.

(01/21/21) South Dakota Governor Looks to Make Telehealth Coverage Permanent
An article outlining South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s plans to permanently extend emergency telehealth rules enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

(01/19/21) What Role Will Telehealth Play After COVID-19?
This article examines important topics dealing with the future of telehealth, including whether or not Congress is committed to telehealth, what private payers think about telehealth, and whether or not telehealth should be a long-term investment.