Месяц: Март 2020

Another care worker I interviewed, Shelly Hughes, a certified nurse’s aide at North Cascades Health and Rehabilitation Center, in Bellingham, near the Canadian border, was in a similar position. She had public health insurance but only a few hours of accrued sick leave. She hoped her union might be able to get its members some version of short-term disability coverage if they contract an infection at work.

Nurse’s aides and licensed practical nurses like Ms. Hughes and Ms. Bridges do exhausting, often tedious work for the four million people in residential long-term care, in return for low pay and meager benefits. America’s long-term care system is already fragile, because of staffing shortages and a growing population of elderly people. The addition of an epidemic makes the situation even more perilous — for nursing staff as well as for patients.

Read more at The New York Times

Shelly Hughes says three things are required to do her job: a strong back, a strong stomach and a big heart.

She’s a certified nurse’s aide at a nursing home in Washington state, which also means another requirement: To get her work done, she has to physically be there.

“You’re helping residents that may not be able to dress themselves, feed themselves, toilet themselves,” Hughes says. “The great stuff is that you get to know wonderful people. I have so many grandmas and grandpas now, let me tell you.”

For many companies, the first call to slow the spread of the coronavirus is telling employees to hunker down and work remotely. But that’s simply not an option for workers like Hughes — home or health aides, who look after some of the most vulnerable, sometimes themselves without health insurance and earning very little.

“We don’t have the luxury of telecommuting,” says Vanessa Jackson from Washington, D.C. She’s a direct support professional who helps people with disabilities navigate everyday life, like paying bills, doing laundry and going to doctor’s appointments.

The region has a severe shortage of workers like Jackson, says Danielle Darby, chief operating officer at Jackson’s company, RCM of Washington. If many start to quarantine at home, “this could potentially be catastrophic,” Darby says.

Shortages of professional caregivers are common across the country. Jobs for home, hospice and nurse’s aides are growing fast and employ millions, but often pay minimum wage or just above.

“I’m lucky because I actually have health insurance,” Hughes says. “Most of the other nurse’s aides in my facility — they don’t have health insurance.”

She says her company offers a high-deductible plan, but many can’t afford it. And she saysher state has a shortage of certified nurse’s aides — managers at her facility have been stepping in to fill the holes in the schedule. Hughes works the night shift alongside a nurse and a second aide.

“If one of us has a fever and is sent home,” she says, “it’s gonna be pretty hard to find somebody to come and work an eight-hour shift in the middle of the night.”

Read more from NPR.

Sherylon Hughes — a direct caregiver at the North Cascades Health and Rehabilitation Center in Bellingham, Washington — says at the start of their shift, workers are now required to report to the nurse on duty to have their temperature checked and fill out a short questionnaire about whether they’ve come in contact with anyone who is potentially infected.

“Everyone is just really concerned,” Hughes says. “There’s a lot of frustration among some of the workers. We feel like the people who are in charge haven’t really come up with a plan for what we are supposed to do.”

She and her coworkers have wondered what would happen if someone at her nursing home tests positive for the coronavirus. Will the facility shut down? Will all the workers be tested? Will they have to pay for it themselves?

“I’m very concerned about the health care workers, the people who are on the front lines,” says Hughes, who makes about $17 an hour. “The potential loss of livelihood is devastating, especially for caregivers. We do not make very much money at all, and none of us can afford to miss work for any extended period of time, and very few of us have healthcare that’s affordable.”

Read more from TIME Magazine.