N95 Respirators are the H1N1 Prevention Winner

Within an hour after the news, the HCPro OSHA Compliance hotline started receiving inquiries about the possibility of cutting the fit-testing requirement. The answer, according to OSHA: "Where respirators are required to be used, the OSHA Respiratory Protection standard must be followed, including worker training and fit testing."

That kind of last-minute-reprieve thinking isn’t unusual, even though readers of the OSHA Healthcare Advisor have known about this issue for some time. The problem is that unlike football, pandemic influenza preparation is not a spectator sport. And time has expired for healthcare facilities that thought the CDC was going to produce a comeback win in the last two minutes of the respirator-mask game.