By Debbie White

When COVID-19 hit, and thousands of desperately sick patients overwhelmed our hospitals, the many inequities in our health care system were exposed not only in who is more likely to get sick and who has access to health care but in who was left unprotected: our health care providers.

What they forgot was what we know if we are not safe, neither are our patients.

Even so, HPAE members across the state of New Jersey showed up, met the disease head-on, and worked diligently for many hours. Then they went home wondering if they had been exposed and worried about also exposing their families. Their fears were valid. Unfortunately, some fell ill and some died from COVID-19.

Our union was often alone in opposing shortcuts in equipment, violations of safety standards and retaliation against those who stood up for safety. We knew it was not time to relax standards, but to strengthen them. We also needed information about what was happening to health care workers on the frontlines and employers were not providing that information.

After listening to our 14,000 members share their experiences. HPAE rose to the occasion and made demands of safety agencies and employers. The almost 1,100 HPAE members who completed our survey, form the backbone of a new report, Exposed & At-Risk: New Jersey health care workers reveal how our safety systems failed them during the COVID-19 pandemic, that we are releasing this week.

In this report, you will hear from health care workers about their experiences, their fears and demands for future pandemic surges. You will read our recommendations on preparedness plans and urgent measures to mitigate surges in COVID-19 and future outbreaks.

We hope never to witness again health care employers downgrading protective equipment for frontline workers, because they, along with federal safety agencies, put their priorities elsewhere. The critical failure to develop standard pandemic plans and keep supplies stockpiled, along with a defunded public health system, left our front-line caregivers unprotected and exposed.

This is why we are working with our legislators on a bill to require health care employers to collect data on exposure, sickness and deaths in disease outbreaks.

As president of HPAE, I felt it an honor to have been appointed to Gov. Phil Murphys Restart and Recovery Advisory Council so I could be a voice for health care workers regarding how to move forward safely, when and if we need to pause, and how to make sure we are prepared to manage future surges of COVID-19or the next disease outbreak.

While we understand and support reopening our economy, it is clearer than ever that we must do it safely, with respect for the capacity of our health care system, and with the willingness of our government agencies to enforce safety rules.

State regulators, policymakers and elected officials must deal directly and honestly with the risks the virus poses to health care workers. Large health care systems in New Jersey were not held to worker safety standards and the CDC, itself, rolled back protections for our health care workers. The federal government could have provided much relief by invoking the Defense Production Act and producing more PPE, instead chose to do nothing to make us safer, and in doing so, hurt us tremendously.

In the context of reopening, HPAE is calling for a return to safe practices and a strengthening of state oversight of health care facilities to ensure health care worker safety and ultimately the safety of patient care. It will take all of our voices in our health care institutions, in our unions, in the halls of Trenton and Washington D.C., and in our communities to make sure we are better equipped with the resources we need to tackle that next challenge.

Debbie White, R.N., is president of Health Professionals & Allied Employees, AFT/AFL-CIO.

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Were all safe when we keep health care workers safe | Opinion - NJ.com