Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#62: Take a moment for yourself
70 Plays5 years ago
Podcast series host Jill James interviews Jonathan Rosen. Jonathan is a certified industrial hygienist and principal consultant, providing occupational safety and industrial hygiene services to labor unions, government agencies, and organizations throughout the United States. Come listen to Jill and Jonathan discuss the work he has done during the COVID-19 pandemic. You’ll learn more about industrial hygiene!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro, brought to you by HSI and Vivid Learning Systems.
Guest Introduction: Jonathan Rosen
00:00:14
Speaker
This is a special edition of the podcast recorded July 30th, 2020. My name is Jill James, HSI's chief safety officer, and today I'm joined by Jonathan Rosen. Jonathan is a certified industrial hygienist and is principal consultant for AJ Rosen and Associates LLC, providing occupational safety and industrial hygiene services to labor unions, government agencies, and organizations throughout the United States.
Jonathan's Professional Journey
00:00:39
Speaker
Jonathan also works for the National Clearinghouse for Worker Safety and Health Training, National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, Worker Education, and Training Program. He has served as the Director of the Occupational Health and Safety Department for New York State's Public Employees Federation, AFL-CIO, for 22 years. Jonathan has been co-investigator on several federal NIOSH intervention research grants
00:01:03
Speaker
and is joining us from his home today in New York. Welcome to the show, Jonathan, and thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be a part of it.
00:01:14
Speaker
The reason I wanted Jonathan to join us for this special episode is to highlight the critical work Jonathan has been doing since the beginning of our current pandemic. You see, Jonathan is the primary author, subject matter expert, for two critical training courses offered free to anyone through the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, or NEHS,
00:01:34
Speaker
which is a division of the National Institutes of Health.
COVID-19 Training Initiatives
00:01:38
Speaker
The courses are titled protecting yourself from COVID-19 in the workplace general awareness training tool, and the other protecting yourself from COVID-19 in the workplace essential and returning workers training tool.
00:01:50
Speaker
You may recall, if you're a listener to the podcast regularly, hearing about the first course during episode 54 of this podcast where Chip Hughes, the director of the NIEHS, shared news of the general awareness tool when it was released. Since we've heard from Chip, Jonathan completed authoring the second course.
Personal Background and Values
00:02:10
Speaker
Jonathan and I met through our joint work in support of the NIHS for this endeavor. My company HSI with Jonathan's help and the collective work of our learning solutions team created the online versions of this course, or the courses rather, which again are free to anyone and we'll share links to the online and the PowerPoint trainers versions in the show notes.
00:02:31
Speaker
It's not very often that we get to hear the backstory to critical training development, yet here we are with you, Jonathan. And I can't wait to have you explain your process, what people will learn from these courses. And yet before we do that, can you tell us a little bit about your journey in health and safety that led you to where you are today? Sure. I'd be glad to. I was a child of the 1960s. And at that time,
00:02:57
Speaker
There was a lot of protests going on for peace, civil rights, workers' rights, and my whole family was kind of swept up in that. My father was an economist who was trained under the GI Bill. He fought against Hitler in World War II.
00:03:23
Speaker
You know, my brother and sister and I all got
Education and Career Development
00:03:25
Speaker
involved in labor unions. And I became a union steward working at a plant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I moved to. And I became the chairman of the union safety and health committee. And the plant was AO Smith, which made truck and car frames.
00:03:46
Speaker
Huge complex between 27th and 35th street in Milwaukee. A really great employer. At the time I was hired, we made $5 an hour, which is probably like $35 an hour or 40 today. And in fact, my very first job, I was a fire watcher because they had had a fire in the paint tank.
00:04:11
Speaker
And that paid even more than $5 an hour. And I learned a lot about the workplace and workplace safety by being a factory worker and a union activist and a safety committee chairman. And there was a rich history in that plant of people losing their fingers and their arms. The story was in the old days, the bus would pull up to the factory gate
00:04:41
Speaker
And the bus driver would say slaughterhouse or butcher shop because so many people lost fingers and arms in the power presses. Wow. And you know, at one point in the late 1980s, I was full time for the union on safety and health. And I worked directly with the company safety director and the union president. And I got access to the company's archives.
00:05:09
Speaker
and they had materials from the 1930s. You know, Joe is a safe worker and he was holding up his hands showing that he had all of his fingers. He knows better than to stick his finger in the press was the approach back then. You know, today we have all kinds of standards and all kinds of controls to prevent people from losing their fingers and arms in such machinery. But
00:05:39
Speaker
That was a great opportunity in the late 80s for me to dig into that history. Wow. You're a certified industrial hygienist, Jonathan. When did that enter your life? When I went to work as a full-time safety rep for the union, I did that for two years. At one point, the company had a bad quarterly report
00:06:08
Speaker
And they put me and the others who were doing quality and other supportive activities back on the assembly line. And by then I knew I really wanted to do this safety and health work full time. So I had started to take college courses and I eventually was able to get an undergraduate degree in science, math, and technology.
00:06:36
Speaker
When they put me back on the line, I started looking for a full time work in the labor movement as a safety and health professional. And I was fortunate to get hired by the New York State Public Employees Federation, even though I didn't have all those credentials. So while I was working and raising three children, I also was able to get a master's degree in industrial health from
00:07:05
Speaker
University of Michigan. And after I completed the master's degree, which was 1993, I got the CIH two years later. Wow, what a journey. Yeah, it was quite an incredible experience. And I was also fortunate that while I was going to college and getting the academic training,
00:07:34
Speaker
I was also doing the work, you know, in the real world. So that gave me a kind of a different perspective, you know, on what I was learning. And a lot of what I was learning, I was able to immediately apply. But it also gave me the motivation. You know, I really knew what I wanted to do. And so I was really hungry to get the
00:07:57
Speaker
the knowledge and the training. I remember in college, I would try to read every page of every assignment, whereas some of my fellow students, you know, they were just trying to read what they had to get by. But I was really thirsting to learn as much as I could. So I remember having a medical dictionary by my side.
00:08:23
Speaker
and getting up at five in the morning to study before I went into my job at the Public Employees Federation. Yeah. So Jonathan, you had explained that you'd been working with the unions and working at the plant in Milwaukee and safety was definitely part of all that. At what point in there do you remember thinking
00:08:49
Speaker
yeah, this is going to be my job. Like I really, really want to work on safety. Was there something that cemented that in your head or was it or was it just kind of the rich history of your family like you talked about? Like it just seemed like a default. Yeah, so I've always been somebody that was motivated around making the world a better place for humanity. And you know, and always, you know, my father
00:09:14
Speaker
and my brother and sister always standing up for the underdog. And, you know, you look at the inequalities in our society, rich versus poor, you know, the discrimination against minorities, the treatment of immigrants, all of that. It was just our family value is that you should stand up for the underdog, that you should treat everybody. I don't care if they have, you know, a PhD, an MD,
00:09:43
Speaker
or if they're picking up garbage, they deserve your respect for the work that they're doing. And so those values were really strongly a part of my upbringing. And when I went to work at the plant and got involved in the union,
00:10:01
Speaker
and got involved in the safety and health, I found that as a way to really make my life's work true to those values. And we're about saving people's lives, keeping them from dying, keeping them from getting diseased, losing their fingers. When I was at
Disaster Response and Training
00:10:20
Speaker
PEPF,
00:10:21
Speaker
One of the biggest hazards was workplace violence in the state institutions and really anywhere that people were dealing with the public, but especially like the institutions for people with mental illness and the prisons and the youth detention facilities and the injuries that the workers would experience, the nurses and the aides. It was not only broken bones and
00:10:49
Speaker
and bruised bodies, but they also experienced, you know, terrible psychological trauma, you know, from those experiences of getting beaten up by patients or inmates or clients. So that became, you know, a big focus of mine when I was at the Public Employees Federation. Yeah. Yeah. And Jonathan, how did you come to work with and alongside the NIEHS? How did how did that come about?
00:11:20
Speaker
Well, you know, when I was leaving the Public Employees Federation, I was, you know, kind of taking advantage of contacting all the people I had worked with through the Occupational Safety and Health section of the American Public Health Association, as well as the labor movement. And
00:11:46
Speaker
The American Public Health Association's Occupational Safety and Health section has people from government, academia, labor, and nonprofit organizations. And so one of the people I had worked with was Deborah Weinstock, who had been at the National AFL-CIO Health and Safety Department.
00:12:09
Speaker
At the time, Hurricane Sandy had hit. And one of the things that the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences Worker Training Program does is they've been very active in disaster, mobilizing grantees to do worker and community training during disasters to protect workers and community members from injury and illness and death.
00:12:36
Speaker
when they're responding to these disasters. So that was a major connection that I made through Deborah and Chip.
00:12:46
Speaker
Hughes, the director of the NIHS worker training program, and it kind of evolved from there. Well, would you mind sharing a little bit about these courses that I talked about in the beginning? Who are they for? And then who takes the classes? And then can you explain a little bit about
00:13:13
Speaker
How do you start from scratch? I mean, especially Jonathan, it's a novel virus. No one's ever dealt with this before. Somebody's got to create training. And here you are. I mean, what a journey. Yeah. So I think, you know, as the news about the virus was, was, you know, coming, I started collecting, you know, articles and
00:13:44
Speaker
Uh, especially I was looking at the peer reviewed, you know, literature. Um, I'm on the mailing list for the journal, the American medical association. And, uh, you know, I, I'm on a number of other mailing lists. There's a, uh, the national, uh, committee on occupational safety and health has a extensive mailing list protecting, uh, America's workers.
00:14:09
Speaker
and they send around a lot of peer reviewed and news articles. So, you know, I collect all that information and I organize it into folders, you know, around different topics, everything from personal protective equipment to healthcare workers to essential workers. And so, you know, I do a lot of that type of basic research
00:14:36
Speaker
you know, to get familiar with what's going on. But I also have a lot of experience with infectious diseases. When I first got hired by PEPF in 1990 was when tuberculosis was resurging. And it was related to HIV.
00:14:57
Speaker
people with HIV and so drug resistant tuberculosis came on the scene and it was the people with HIV their immune system is compromised so we weren't detecting that they were also infected with some of them with the drug resistant TB and in New York State some of the inmates
00:15:20
Speaker
were taken to a community hospital in New York City and then transferred all over the state to different prisons and hospitals. And so the TB, the drug resistant TB was spread all over the prison system and into these hospitals, including state hospitals in which the PEPF members worked. And one of them in upstate New York, 70 workers were infected. Oh, wow. Why?
00:15:50
Speaker
because the negative pressure isolation room was positively pressurized. So the drug resistant, the contaminated air with drug resistant TB was literally being blown out of the room, down the hall, and it infected 70 workers and two patients and there were some fatalities. And then some of the fatalities went to the morgue
00:16:19
Speaker
And some of the morgue workers, when they were carving into the cadavers to do the autopsies, they got infected. And that led NIOSH to evaluate the safety and health of the people doing the autopsies and coming up with standards for ventilation and other control measures. And that was just one, the very first infectious disease experience I had. There was also the effort by
00:16:49
Speaker
President Bush to get everybody vaccinated against smallpox, which we mobilized against because that was not a good approach to protecting people. It was putting people at risk because that was a live virus vaccine that could cause serious health effects and even death. And the only smallpox
00:17:17
Speaker
you know, in the world is in the CDC's freezer and in Russia's freezer. And so some people feel that that should be eliminated. But some people are saying, well, we've got to keep it for research purposes or in case it gets in the hands of bioterrorists. So that was a big campaign. Then we had H1N1, we had H5N1, we had
00:17:46
Speaker
SARS-1, which was very relevant to SARS-2. And I actually saved all those folders with all those PDF files from SARS-1. And one of the ironic things is the recommendations to protect workers for SARS-1 were much better than what we're getting for SARS-2.
00:18:11
Speaker
from both the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control. How do you think that is, Jonathan? Well, I think it has to do with the shortage of PPE and respirators. And I think a lot of the decisions are based on the shortage of the supply rather than what's best for the workers. But going back to the TB days, there was always a bit of a
00:18:38
Speaker
debate between industrial hygiene, occupational safety and health, and infection control. Occupational health is more focused on exposure prevention, whereas infection control is break the chain of transmission.
00:18:57
Speaker
And I've always felt that we should take the best of all disciplines and merge them. And I like working with people from different disciplines and learning from them and adapting their good practices and getting them to adapt mine. But instead, there's been a historical clash about these things. And so industrial hygiene is really the experts on
00:19:27
Speaker
you know, inhalation and aerosols and respiratory protection. And there's just been a big misunderstanding by some medical personnel and infection control personnel on the characteristics of aerosols and particles. And, you know, a particle is a particle and a filter that can filter out submicron particles
00:19:55
Speaker
It doesn't care if it's asbestos or SARS-CoV-2. It's going to basically do the same thing. In health care, we've always advocated that there should be a combination of control measures, ventilation like the negative pressure,
00:20:17
Speaker
filtration, exhaust the air to the outside, maybe use upper room ultraviolet irradiation. But on top of that, respiratory protection for the health care workers and limit the number of workers that go in the room, that type of thing. So, you know, I've had all of that experience. We also were involved heavily around issues of bloodborne pathogens.
00:20:45
Speaker
HIV, hepatitis B, C, D, et cetera.
Training Methodologies and Audiences
00:20:51
Speaker
And so I did a lot to support injured workers and workers who were exposed. And working with the union, a lot of advocacy as well as research. And so I was able to bring all of those experiences and skill sets
00:21:12
Speaker
to the project of developing the curricula on the awareness training and then the essential worker training. And the other big skill set is adult training methodology and techniques. And that's a whole nother
00:21:33
Speaker
kind of science or art and art and that's one of the one of the things I like about safety and health is I've always felt it was a mixture of science and art because you can be creative with it you know you sure can I mean look at what vivid does you know with the all the what I call the bells and whistles you know it's it's like playing a video game it's fun you know and I
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah, right. Jonathan's referring to the learning solutions team and the instructional designers that took your work and research and used all those adult training methodologies and techniques you just referred to to make engaging, memorable learning experience. And we know some adult learners are more visual. Some are more looking at numbers. Some are looking at logic.
00:22:25
Speaker
Some want statistics, some are motivated by emotion. As a curriculum developer and designer, you want to hit on all of those different approaches. Also, because of the nature of what we're doing, we're creating a tool that can be modified and adapted,
00:22:53
Speaker
to multiple industries and populations. So we try to aim for about an eighth grade level, and we try to keep it simple. We want it to be visual, stimulating, and very interactive. People tune out after about six minutes of lecture, I understand. So small group activities, we do a lot of that.
00:23:22
Speaker
And the theory there is that adults have a lot of knowledge and experience to bring to the table. So if you can get them active in sharing their knowledge and experience, it'll be much richer than if the trainer is the sole source of expertise and information.
00:23:44
Speaker
Right, right. So Jonathan, can you explain a little bit about the difference between the two courses, you know, as you as you created them and kind of who those audiences are and you're saying you're saying that you design them, it sounds like for lots of audiences, but can you describe those two courses a bit?
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, they're both awareness level, meaning that if a company or an organization is going to use them for their company or organizational training, they're going to need to put their specific policies and procedures and requirements into them. They don't have that. So the first one was really going over the basics of
00:24:31
Speaker
the characteristics of the disease and SARS-CoV-2 is the virus, COVID-19 is the disease, talking about the symptoms as we knew them, how it's transmitted. There's slides that talked about what was happening worldwide and in the US, and those were slides where you could click on a link
00:24:59
Speaker
and update them. And there was information about how to protect yourself and how to do a basic risk assessment to determine what level of protection is needed. We talked about some of the OSHA standards that are relevant, like personal protective equipment, respiratory protection, the general duty clause,
00:25:26
Speaker
et cetera, talked a little bit about disinfection and cleaning, but very much on the awareness level, kind of the big picture level. Yeah, and then the other course. Yeah, the other course is geared towards essential and returning workers. And even though that is awareness, there were
00:25:56
Speaker
a lot more detail about who are the essential workers. One of the training techniques I use is animations where you put the question to the people you're training and then at the end after they've given you input,
00:26:16
Speaker
you can click on the slide and it'll give you the summary, which is mainly what they've just shared with you. And in the Zoom or the virtual world, you get that input either through a chat box or a whiteboard, something like that. Although we have been able to do small group activities with the Zoom platform and some of the other platforms.
00:26:45
Speaker
But some of the other content differences is a lot about workers rights, right under OSHA, but also issues about right to refuse unsafe work. And in the current environment, people are even complaining to the mayor, the police or the health department because OSHA has not been very
00:27:11
Speaker
active around complaints that they've received. That's right. And there's a whole section of photographs. I think this was a kind of a creative technique. It's like what's wrong with this picture? What's the control measure? So we had, you know, I was fortunate my cousin who's a
00:27:35
Speaker
at one point was a professional photographer who lives in New York City. I called her up and she went around taking pictures of essential workers. So I've got a photo of a cop with no gloves. He's bearded wearing a respirator and, you know, not very well protected if he had to
00:28:01
Speaker
you know, get within a close distance to somebody to do his job. There was a taxi cab driver. And I think they were wearing some type of surgical mask. And there were grocery stores and postal workers. My niece, who's a nurse, sent me a picture of what she was wearing, which was a face shield and a procedure mask.
00:28:31
Speaker
Now I believe she should have had an N95 as a minimum, but her facility was not providing them. And fortunately she has not been infected and she has two young children. So that's a pretty serious condition. She was very nervous about infecting her family. So I've been able to kind of, you know, get a lot of support from
00:28:58
Speaker
you know, friends and family and colleagues. And I've had the experience of doing this for NIHS ever since Sandy. You know, we did mold, mucking and gutting and, you know, hurricane hazards. And, you know, we also developed resilience training for disaster workers, which was funded by the BP oil spill.
00:29:26
Speaker
And we piloted these courses in Louisiana, New York City, and elsewhere. United Auto Workers have adopted that program, which deals with stress and trauma. And that's another topic that are covered in the COVID courses, mental health effects.
00:29:48
Speaker
for essential and returning workers are huge. People worried about getting infected, infecting their family. You go to the workplace, and all the procedures have changed. And you've got these new requirements to wear a mask and socially distance. And maybe you're a cleaner, and you have to do enhanced cleaning and disinfection. But there isn't an increase in the staffing.
00:30:18
Speaker
And actually some of the training that I've been doing, one of the biggest stresses I'm hearing from rank and file workers is the whole issue of masks because it's become political.
00:30:32
Speaker
Um, you know, who, who enforces it? I mean, that's not the job for the cleaners to do. And yet, you know, they, I've heard rank and file workers tell me about shouting matches, you know, but, you know, between workers or workers with customers, uh, think about, uh, people working in parks.
00:30:55
Speaker
you know, where people are partying and congregating, you know, that's a high risk, you know, situation. And I think that's spread a lot of COVID, you know, around the country. I'm sorry, what were you gonna say? Right. Yeah, an increase in workplace violence. Oh, yeah, definitely. Bullying and stress. Yeah, byproduct of this for sure, for sure.
00:31:20
Speaker
So Jonathan, the courses that you developed, both of them, are consumable in a couple of different ways. And we've already talked about the online version. But the PowerPoint version, and you were talking about Zoom and other meeting platforms, can you talk about how trainers are using those? Just give a little glimpse into how that's working with the content.
00:31:49
Speaker
Yeah, so, you know, we do have in both programs, extensive instructor notes beneath the slides. And the instructor notes have a lot of tips on, you know, how you can do the training or alternative ways to do it. There is guidance in the in there about tailoring it. So tailoring it, if you're training,
00:32:17
Speaker
transportation workers for the MTA, then you're not going to be showing pictures of the grocery store. You're going to be showing pictures, hopefully, of the subway and the bus and getting people to talk about how to protect themselves in those circumstances. That would be an example of how people would tailor it. Also, if there is a written policy or procedure,
00:32:47
Speaker
you know, you could incorporate that into the training is what we would recommend. And if there's personal protective equipment or respirators or a site specific cleaning and disinfection policy, all of that could be integrated into the training. And if you're limited on time, if you don't have the full four to six hours that these programs are designed for, then you can reduce the time
00:33:17
Speaker
For example, we have a fact sheet on the basics about SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19. And you can eliminate, you know, a good 15 slides or so by giving people the fact sheet. You can also be creative with the fact sheet.
00:33:38
Speaker
and give that to the participants and have them read through it and ask them questions. What's the difference between SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19? You can develop different ways of interacting with the folks that you're training depending on how much time and what their needs are.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah, right. So anyone who's listening to this right now, who's a safety and health professional, you can have access. We'll conclude it in the show notes to the PowerPoint deck that Jonathan's referring to along with those instructor notes, as well as a link to the online version, which can be used, you know, one person, one computer or an instructor could use it.
00:34:24
Speaker
in a group setting as well and lean into those facilitator notes too. What we're talking about today is accessible to everyone and anyone and really encouraging people who rather than trying to struggle and do all this research that Jonathan's been talking about, it's already been done for you and it's accessible for anyone. The instructor notes also have the references for the research that
00:34:52
Speaker
you know, went into the program. But one thing I've been doing in these Zoom trainings is early on, either through a small group activity or open your mic or a chat box, asking people, what are your concerns about, you know, COVID-19 as you return to the workplace? And that way, as a trainer, I'm hearing early on what people's concerns are.
00:35:20
Speaker
And that way I can orient myself towards that. And if it means that we kind of get out of order in the training, that doesn't bother me because to me, having the real interaction that people are tuned into and you're meeting their needs as a trainer, you know, that's more important than sticking to the agenda or sticking to the PowerPoint.
00:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And Jonathan, as you've been doing this training and I mean, what a full circle description, you know, you've authored it, you've written it, developed it and you're also using it. What are you hearing from people? What are their top concerns about returning to work? Are there themes that you're picking up? I mean, I think I can guess, but what are you hearing? You know, a lot of people are planning on reopening and they're trying to figure out
00:36:15
Speaker
you know, how to function. And a lot of the organizations, like I had the rich opportunity of working with a community organization.
00:36:29
Speaker
And they literally have hundreds and hundreds of people in their offices every day. And, you know, how do you create social distance? How do you work with the landlord to adjust the ventilation? All of those are big issues and still, you know, maintain, you know, the services and the connection with the community that you're serving. So, you know, that's
00:36:56
Speaker
They were very tuned into the training and we were able to kind of orient it towards that particular need.
00:37:03
Speaker
Um, you know, there's other folks that, that I trained that were public employees and they brought up about the masks and the bullying and, uh, you know, uh, the lack of staff and resources.
Course Review and Adaptation
00:37:18
Speaker
Um, there was one fellow who worked for the state labor department who was upset because his computer kept crashing and, uh, he wanted to do a good job of serving the public.
00:37:33
Speaker
and yet the computer that the state provided him kept crashing. So those were some of the kinds of issues people were bringing up. Right, right. I think you had referenced earlier some pilot programming with training that you've maybe done now or in the past. Can you tell us a little more about that? Yeah, the process that NIHS and the Clearinghouse uses when we develop a training is we have it peer reviewed.
00:38:03
Speaker
usually by other federal agency partners, CDC, NIOSH, OSHA, ASPR, EPA, to name a few. And then we also have it peer reviewed by grantees because our grantee community has tremendous expertise. We have university and labor-based safety and health professionals.
00:38:29
Speaker
professors, researchers, and practitioners. We go through a lot of revision before it even gets piloted. Then when we pilot it, we do a lot of evaluation. At the end of the pilot, we get feedback from the participants and we try to note things that we can modify and improve.
00:38:55
Speaker
And then after we've done the piloting and the evaluation, we post it on the Clearinghouse website. And I think if you type into Google National Clearinghouse for worker safety and health training, that'll get you to that website.
00:39:20
Speaker
And actually, right on the opening page is a link to the COVID-19 resources right now. Yeah, and we'll include them in the show notes. Yeah, it's actually a simple URL. I'll read it. Tools.niehs.nih.gov backslash WETP backslash. Wonderful. Thank you.
00:39:49
Speaker
So is that peer review part, is that kind of nerve wracking after you poured your heart and soul into all this research and writing and then to have peers review or what does that feel like for you? I mean, I welcome it because I've always felt that teamwork and collaboration, you always get a better product than just doing it on your own. You're bringing in other people's knowledge, experience,
00:40:19
Speaker
You know, and, and so yeah, there's a little bit of pain. Some of the comments you might not love or you might think are nitpicking. Um, we always tell people that things like grammar.
00:40:32
Speaker
or type setting, don't worry about that. We work with a professional designer. We work with Vivid. We don't need you to fix the grammar or the layout. But invariably, people comment on the grammar and the layout. So we triage that. And what we do is we have a matrix.
00:40:58
Speaker
and we put in all the comments slide by slide. So as we go through the comments, we document how we resolve them and make the edits and the changes. And I find that to be a really good process. And I think it really enriches the end product.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah, right, right. So Jonathan, is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience about the courses or just kind of current state of what you're seeing right now with training or the virus in your professional view? I just want to emphasize the importance of training. I think worker training is not always
00:41:47
Speaker
conducted and it's not understood how valuable it can be. Take a look at the healthcare industry. They've shifted over the years to video training. So you have a nurse working 12 hours and you say during your
00:42:02
Speaker
you know, half hour lunch break, watch this video on bloodborne pathogens. Well, you know, you can do some of the training by video, but some of it needs to be interactive, you know, where you're, you know, if you're training people on things like mental health or resilience, for example, what makes that training dynamic
00:42:25
Speaker
is when people start telling their stories and sharing with you the traumas that they've been through and putting the human face on these issues. And I think when it comes to COVID-19, it's really important that people understand why it's important to make the changes that we're making in the workplace, why you need to wear a mask,
00:42:52
Speaker
why you need to wear a respirator, how you don and doff it so you don't contaminate yourself. The whole issue of how the virus is transmitted, huge, huge issue. And if workers don't believe it or don't understand it, they're not going to cooperate. And what I've seen is a lot of employers, a lot of government officials,
00:43:19
Speaker
And even a lot of safety and health professionals tend to blame the worker for not complying. But then has that worker really been given rich training and education so that they understand why they need to? A good example is respiratory protection in healthcare.
00:43:40
Speaker
You know, the OSHA standard requires training, but most of the training programs that are provided in healthcare are like 15 minute added on to a fit testing effort or for a 15 minute video. To me, that's totally inadequate when you're talking about protecting somebody from a potentially
00:44:04
Speaker
know, deadly disease like Ebola or a disease like drug resistant TB. You know, I think about, you know, Laura Hopkins, and I have permission to use her name. She was a PEPF member and a nurse and she was infected in that incident I talked about at the beginning of the program and out of work for two and a half years and had to be flown from upstate New York
00:44:30
Speaker
to the Denver Jewish Respiratory Hospital to have part of her lung removed and her family wouldn't see her because they were afraid. So, you know, I think if we value workers and we really respect workers, then we will
00:44:48
Speaker
take the time to give them meaningful and appropriate and interactive and training that that'll really, I think that'll make a huge, huge difference. And I think the NIHS materials and also the materials of all the grantees are a really rich resource that the listeners to this show should tap into.
00:45:17
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. And and I will include all of those in the show notes. So everyone who's listening, be sure to check those out so you can go to the resources that Jonathan's talking about. There's also a list on the Clearinghouse website of all the grantees. And if you go to if you look up their website, you can see the programs that they offer. Some of it is, you know, because of the federal funding, it's either free or very cheap. The mainstay is
00:45:45
Speaker
has whopper training and hazardous materials training and OSHA training and confined space, things like that. But they ventured into resilience and opioids and now infectious diseases.
00:46:05
Speaker
Fabulous, Jonathan. Thank you so much for sharing. First of all, thank you for doing the work that you're doing. Thank you for having that mind that got up at 5.30 in the morning and wanted to read through all those journals. I think you set yourself up well for what you've been doing in support of the worker training program all these years. It's incredible work and it's so important. Thank you so much.
00:46:30
Speaker
Well, thank you for thanking me. I appreciate it. It's phenomenal. And I hope people take advantage of the training that you've created in partnership with everyone else. Dear podcast listeners, a special note for this episode, which I recorded after Jonathan and I ended our recording session.
00:46:51
Speaker
Since early March, the NIEHS has held weekly and sometimes twice weekly workshops sharing information, training, and stories from researchers, scientists, hospitals, unions, health and safety experts from all over the United States. They are sharing information for all of us as we learn more and more about this novel virus and how we can protect the workforce.
00:47:14
Speaker
The workshops are chocked full of intense critical information. The recordings of those workshops are also available to you, and I'll share them with you in the show notes of this episode. At the end of the workshops each week, we have a moment of reflection and calm. We are all, all of us, everyone listening now, working our hearts out to keep our workforce protected. And we're all tired, and I bet you are too.
00:47:40
Speaker
And it's important that we spend some time renewing so that we can each keep going. So to that end, the weekly NIHS workshops end every session with a guided meditation and sometimes a song. Imagine that. On one particular day, Jonathan and Annie, who is Jonathan's wife, ended our workshop with a song.
00:48:02
Speaker
After Jonathan and I ended the recording of this particular session, he and Annie sang Into My Ears the same song that they had performed weeks earlier in one of the workshops to remind us that we're all in this together. So Jonathan left the recording, picked up his guitar, and he and Annie sang John Lennon's Imagine.
00:48:25
Speaker
It was a beautiful gift that required me to use three tissues. I wish I could share it with you. However, copyright laws being what they are and appropriately so we can't
00:48:38
Speaker
So I encourage you, however, to take a moment of stillness now after you're finished listening here. And perhaps search for Lennon's song, Imagine, and listen to it. And let yourself regenerate for just a moment. And imagine all the people sharing in this together. So thank you. Thank you all for what you're doing. And until next time, thanks for listening.