Easing the pressure on parents and kids
Sep. 29th, 2020 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterI certainly don't envy the public health professionals. Many of them have been subject to death threats, online and in-person bullying and harassment and a long list of unpleasant behaviour that may or may not be illegal - simply for doing their job.
While most have no doubt been hired first and foremost for their medical credentials, this is one job where those oft-dubbed "soft skills" are of paramount importance. They have to be ambassadors and mediators and counsellors as well as "just" doctors. It doesn't help when the various stakeholders - politicians, bureaucrats, business people, parents and educators all have different levels of understanding and different, at times competing personal priorities. Common ground must be sought, tempers calmed, fears allayed.
As someone who worked in the bureaucracy for many years, I'd be the first to admit that bureaucrats are often the worst offenders when it comes to erecting needless hoops for others to jump through or spinning endless loops and tangles of red tape. Rules often have good solid reasons and rationales behind them but that doesn't mean they can't be reviewed, revised and simplified!
One of the people who never fails to impress me is Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa's Chief Medical Officer of Health. Not only does she provide timely, well-informed advice but she keeps her cool and her understanding, empathy and compassion shine through.
With everyone worried about Covid-19, it's easy to understand wanting to exclude potentially infected people from your orbit. But given the nature of the virus, a totally risk-free environment is frankly unachievable - it's a question of managing relative risks and being COVID-WISE.
The quest for an iron-clad guarantee, which some lay people assume could be provided with that piece of paper or e-paper indicating you tested negative for the virus, has led to serious line-ups and bottlenecks in the testing process. In the education system, kids who have only just returned to school after months of absence, are suddenly expected to stay out of school for days or weeks if they show up with a slight sniffle. Then the entire family's life is disrupted for weeks on end for no good reason.
So to clarify matters and reassure anxious people in the school community, Dr. Etches has come out with that tool of the bureaucratic trade, a form letter:
https://www.ottawapublichealth.ca/en/resources/Student-Return-to-School-Attestation.pdf
But unlike the inanities of touch-tone telephone trees or captchas that are supposed to "prove" you're not a robot or some of the other cyber-world innovations, I think most people would agree that this one was crafted with human skill and wisdom!
While most have no doubt been hired first and foremost for their medical credentials, this is one job where those oft-dubbed "soft skills" are of paramount importance. They have to be ambassadors and mediators and counsellors as well as "just" doctors. It doesn't help when the various stakeholders - politicians, bureaucrats, business people, parents and educators all have different levels of understanding and different, at times competing personal priorities. Common ground must be sought, tempers calmed, fears allayed.
As someone who worked in the bureaucracy for many years, I'd be the first to admit that bureaucrats are often the worst offenders when it comes to erecting needless hoops for others to jump through or spinning endless loops and tangles of red tape. Rules often have good solid reasons and rationales behind them but that doesn't mean they can't be reviewed, revised and simplified!
One of the people who never fails to impress me is Dr. Vera Etches, Ottawa's Chief Medical Officer of Health. Not only does she provide timely, well-informed advice but she keeps her cool and her understanding, empathy and compassion shine through.
With everyone worried about Covid-19, it's easy to understand wanting to exclude potentially infected people from your orbit. But given the nature of the virus, a totally risk-free environment is frankly unachievable - it's a question of managing relative risks and being COVID-WISE.
The quest for an iron-clad guarantee, which some lay people assume could be provided with that piece of paper or e-paper indicating you tested negative for the virus, has led to serious line-ups and bottlenecks in the testing process. In the education system, kids who have only just returned to school after months of absence, are suddenly expected to stay out of school for days or weeks if they show up with a slight sniffle. Then the entire family's life is disrupted for weeks on end for no good reason.
So to clarify matters and reassure anxious people in the school community, Dr. Etches has come out with that tool of the bureaucratic trade, a form letter:
https://www.ottawapublichealth.ca/en/resources/Student-Return-to-School-Attestation.pdf
But unlike the inanities of touch-tone telephone trees or captchas that are supposed to "prove" you're not a robot or some of the other cyber-world innovations, I think most people would agree that this one was crafted with human skill and wisdom!
