Health-care employers should take advice from SARS commission
After SARS swept through Toronto making health-care workers sick, killing two nurses, a doctor and many patients, Justice Archie Campbell gave us his SARS Commission report, a blueprint for prevention of a similar tragedy. There was never greater need for his wisdom than there is today.
Today, we need solid facts and honest, transparent information, clearly communicated. We are all confused by what we as health-care workers are being told. Ontario Health Minister Christine Elliott, committed to keeping front line health-care workers safe, saying, “There is no rationing of personal protective equipment right now for front line workers.”
Yet only a day earlier, her ministry released recommendations for healthcare organizations that underscored the need to “reduce inappropriate use and conserve supply,” in other words, ration. Is it any surprise that around the province nurses are reporting that their N95 respirators are locked up, they’re discouraged from using them, and there are even threats of discipline if they do?
During SARS, confused messages lead to calamity as employers and workers around the province scrambled to understand how to protect themselves and their patients.
More confusion arose about whether SARS could be inhaled and whether workers needed proper respiratory protection in the form of N95 respirators, as opposed to surgical masks which are not designed to protect against inhalation of tiny, virus-laden particles. And the same thing is happening today. Public Health Ontario posted a document that included the statement, “There is no evidence that COVID-19 is transmitted through the airborne route.”
The debate is ongoing because the science is not certain about transmission.
It was just such a situation that led Justice Campbell to emphatically conclude that the No. 1 lesson from SARS was, “the precautionary principle that safety comes first, that reasonable efforts to reduce risk need not await scientific proof.”
Err on the side of safety is a principle that had long been embedded in industrial culture, yet until the Campbell report, health care didn’t understand that. However, through hard work and collaborative efforts with unions, government and employers over the past 17 years I thought health and safety consciousness was finally taking root in the sector. Instead, some have forgotten all that SARS taught us.
If I were a health-care employer in these times, when science is uncertain, I would look to the Campbell blueprint to guide me.
Be led by the precautionary principle, do everything in these circumstances to give workers access to the highest forms of protective equipment, and train them and drill them in use.
There is much talk about depletion of N95 respirators, but instead of resorting to lesser forms of protection like surgical masks, seek out supplies of superior types of respirators, like elastomeric reusable units, and powered air purified respirators for the highest risk procedures. Together, intentionally canvas for adaptable supplies from idled industries, colleges and other community sources.
We don’t want to be lead down a path we pledged never again to walk. Some may not remember the anguish of SARS and the advice of Justice Campbell. But we will never forget. And I’m counting on our province’s healthcare employers to heed the lessons and do the right thing.