Who gets safety precautions in healthcare?

SciShow – The Return of Thalidomide – Jun 14, 2023

Hank Green on Youtube: As I’m making this video, I’m actually taking chemotherapy right now. And it’s wild. They give you the chemo, but before they do they dress up to make sure none of it gets on their skin because it’s dangerous for people. And then they put it in my veins. Sorry if that’s how you found out I have cancer. It’s a pretty treatable kind. We’re doing good.

So, healthcare workers are still donning PPE to protect themselves from the toxic treatments of cancer patients, but they can’t put on a mask to protect the cancer patients from infectious diseases? Viruses that might undo the whole purpose of the cancer treatment.

Kashif Pirzada, MD @KashPrime posted on twitter 11:32 PM · Jun 12, 2023

“Shouldn’t she be in an isolation room?” someone asked. Good question. “What’s the point. Isn’t our hospital mask mandate ending soon?” someone else said. Ah, now we get to the point. If we were actually following the science, we would have screened her to a separate zone, away from the other patients in the waiting room. She could have infected any number of children, chemo patients, pregnant patients. Instead, we and every patient are now expected to make our own decisions on how to protect ourselves. You could roll into a cancer clinic and cough on every single patient in the waiting room, and not violate policy now.

Hospitals need better policies than that.