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Amid Covid Health Worker Shortage, Foreign-Trained Professionals Sit on Sidelines
Use Our Content It can be republished for free. As hospitals nationwide struggle with the latest covid-19 surge, it’s not so much beds or ventilators in short supply. It’s the people to care for the sick. Yet a large, highly skilled workforce of foreign-educated doctors, nurses and other health practitioners is going largely untapped due to licensing and credentialing barriers. According to the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., some 165,000 foreign-trained immigrants in the U.S. hold degrees in health-related fields but are unemployed or underemployed in the midst of t...
Kaiser Health News
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Amid Covid Health Worker Shortage, Foreign-Trained Professionals Sit on Sidelines
Use Our Content It can be republished for free. As hospitals nationwide struggle with the latest covid-19 surge, it’s not so much beds or ventilators in short supply. It’s the people to care for the sick. Yet a large, highly skilled workforce of foreign-educated doctors, nurses and other health practitioners is going largely untapped due to licensing and credentialing barriers. According to the Migration Policy Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., some 165,000 foreign-trained immigrants in the U.S. hold degrees in health-related fields but are unemployed or underemployed in the midst of t...
California Healthline
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Health Workers Unions See Surge in Interest Amid Covid
This story also ran on NPR. It can be republished for free. The nurses at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, declared on March 6 — by filing the official paperwork — that they were ready to vote on the prospect of joining a national union. At the time, they were motivated by the desire for more nurses and support staff, and to have a voice in hospital decisions. A week later, as the covid-19 pandemic bore down on the state, the effort was put on hold, and everyone scrambled to respond to the coronavirus. But the nurses’ long-standing concerns only became heightened during the crisi...
Kaiser Health News
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Health Workers Unions See Surge in Interest Amid COVID
The nurses at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, declared on March 6 — by filing the official paperwork — that they were ready to vote on the prospect of joining a national union. At the time, they were motivated by the desire for more nurses and support staff, and to have a voice in hospital decisions. This story also ran on NPR. It can be republished for free. A week later, as the covid-19 pandemic bore down on the state, the effort was put on hold, and everyone scrambled to respond to the coronavirus. But the nurses’ long-standing concerns only became heightened during the crisi...
California Healthline
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Illinois, primer estado en ofrecer cobertura médica a adultos mayores indocumentados
Como jefa de enfermería en uno de los hospitales más concurridos de la red de seguridad de atención médica de Chicago, Raquel Prendkowski ha sido testigo del devastador número de víctimas que COVID-19 ha causado entre los residentes más vulnerables de la ciudad, incluyendo a personas que no tienen seguro médico por su estatus migratorio. Algunos llegan tan enfermos que van directo a cuidados intensivos. Muchos no sobreviven. “Vivimos una pesadilla constante”, dijo Prendkowski mientras trataba a pacientes con coronavirus en el Hospital Mount Sinai, fundado a principios del siglo XX para atender...
Kaiser Health News (Espanol)
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Illinois Is First in the Nation to Extend Health Coverage to Undocumented Seniors
As a nurse manager for one of Chicago’s busiest safety-net hospitals, Raquel Prendkowski has witnessed covid-19’s devastating toll on many of the city’s most vulnerable residents — including people who lack health insurance because of their immigration status. Some come in so sick they go right to intensive care. Some don’t survive. “We’re in a bad dream all the time,” she said during a recent day treating coronavirus patients at Mount Sinai Hospital, which was founded in the early 20th century to care for the city’s poorest immigrants. “I can’t wait to wake up from this.” Prendkowski believes...
Kaiser Health News
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Illinois Is First in the Nation to Extend Health Coverage to Undocumented Seniors
As a nurse manager for one of Chicago’s busiest safety-net hospitals, Raquel Prendkowski has witnessed covid-19’s devastating toll on many of the city’s most vulnerable residents — including people who lack health insurance because of their immigration status. Some come in so sick they go right to intensive care. Some don’t survive. “We’re in a bad dream all the time,” she said during a recent day treating coronavirus patients at Mount Sinai Hospital, which was founded in the early 20th century to care for the city’s poorest immigrants. “I can’t wait to wake up from this.” Prendkowski believes...
California Healthline
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Eureka! Two Vaccines Work — But What About the Also-Rans in the Pharma Arms Race?
This story also ran on Daily Beast. It can be republished for free. As I prepared to get my shot in mid-December as part of a covid vaccine trial run by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, I considered the escape routes. Bailing out of the trial was a very real consideration since two other vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, had been deemed safe and effective for emergency approval. Leaving the trial would be a perfectly sane decision for me or anyone who had volunteered for an ongoing covid experiment. Why risk getting covid-19 if I was given a placebo, a shot with no vaccine in it? The way ...
Kaiser Health News
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Eureka! Two Vaccines Work — But What About the Also-Rans in the Pharma Arms Race?
This story also ran on Daily Beast. It can be republished for free. As I prepared to get my shot in mid-December as part of a covid vaccine trial run by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, I considered the escape routes. Bailing out of the trial was a very real consideration since two other vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, had been deemed safe and effective for emergency approval. Leaving the trial would be a perfectly sane decision for me or anyone who had volunteered for an ongoing covid experiment. Why risk getting covid-19 if I was given a placebo, a shot with no vaccine in it? The way ...
California Healthline
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Heading Off the Next Pandemic
As the covid-19 pandemic heads for a showdown with vaccines it’s expected to lose, many experts in the field of emerging infectious diseases are already focused on preventing the next one. They fear another virus will leap from wildlife into humans, one that is far more lethal but spreads as easily as SARS-CoV-2, the strain of coronavirus that causes covid-19. A virus like that could change the trajectory of life on the planet, experts say. “What keeps me up at night is that another coronavirus like MERS, which has a much, much higher mortality rate, becomes as transmissible as covid,” said Ch...
Kaiser Health News
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