makes an allowance \u201cif staff shortages continue despite other mitigation strategies.\u201d<\/a> The guidance urges employers to to consider what type of worker shortage needs to be addressed. Kirkpatrick gave an example of highly trained psychiatric nurses working in long-term care facilities. The guidance recommends considering where the worker is in the course of the virus, which would determine how likely that worker is to shed the virus and be contagious. It says to consider the worker\u2019s degree of interaction with patients. For example, do they work face-to-face or in telemedicine?<\/p>“We decided, as a state, we wanted to amplify that federal guidance,” Kirkpatrick said.<\/p>
Frye said the risk potential would be low, as long as the worker was in a COVID-19 ward. Their non-infected coworkers would be protecting themselves against exposure with personal protective equipment and other measures.<\/p>
\u201cThe chances of spreading to a coworker are pretty minimal because every worker in there, all day long, works with covid-positive patients,\u201d he said.<\/p>
During the availability, News9 reporter Ashley Holden said that nurses have contacted the station with concerns that their employers didn\u2019t have enough protections in place, and that they wanted to know whether the state had its own guidelines on this practice.<\/p>
Kirkpatrick, the deputy commissioner of health, said that because this practice is so new, the state does not have its own guidelines, and that not many other organizations do.<\/p>
“We\u2019re in a new era of this guidance, \u201c he said. \u201cThere’s not a whole lot of ‘do this, not that\u2019 that we can really provide. So we\u2019re leaning heavily on the providers themselves to kind of practice best standards.\u201d<\/p>
Holden asked if non-infected health care workers, who are working with infected staff and concerned about their own safety, had any recourse, such as a contact within the department of health they could reach directly. Commissioner of Health Frye said he\u2019d received emails with that question, and that he\u2019d discussed the matter with industry groups such as the Oklahoma Hospital Association.<\/p>
\u201cWe have the same goals,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to work together to increase nursing capacity within the state of Oklahoma.\u201d<\/p>
During a separate virtual briefing, Oklahoma Nurses Association CEO Jane Nelson criticized the guidance. She said that keeping infected and noninfected workers separated would prove impossible. But logistics and risk were not her only concerns.<\/p>
\u201cIt is a mixed message to the public to allow asymptomatic COVID-positive nurses, physicians and other health care workers to work,\u201d she said. \u201cThey need to be home quarantining like the rest of the public.\u201d<\/p>
Dr. Scott Michener, the chief medical officer at Comanche County Memorial Hospital, spoke during the same briefing as Nelson. He discussed his hospital\u2019s ICU capacity being at 120 percent, with overflow spilling into several departments, including the emergency room. He echoed that the bed shortage doesn\u2019t refer to the need for physical beds but the lack of workers to staff beds.<\/p>
\u201cThe state health department said today that asymptomatic providers can continue to work, and that\u2019s their way to alleviate staffing shortages,\u201d he said. \u201cJust, to me, that seems like the most insane thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Oklahoma attempts to manage its third coronavirus wave, state officials have pitched a controversial tool to address the state\u2019s health worker shortage: allowing infected nurses, physicians and staff to keep working.The third wave began in November. Case counts again began breaking records, with the 7-day average hitting 3,000 this week. Hospitalizations are off the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33564"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33567,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33564\/revisions\/33567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}