Ohio Nurse December 2021

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Page 4 Ohio Nurse December 2021 Public Service Loan Forgiveness • Simplify what it means for a payment to qualify for PSLF. • Eliminate barriers for military service members to receive PSLF. • Review Denied PSLF Applications and Identify and Correct Errors in PSLF Processing. Ask Nurse Jesse: Nurse Jesse, I heard that there may be new options for student loan forgiveness for nurses who work in the public sector. How can I learn more? Answer: The Department of Education announced in October 2021 that the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program will be changing. These changes allow for previously rejected applications to be reviewed and re-processed and include expanding eligibility for forgiveness. The program updates will: • Implement a Limited PSLF Waiver to count all prior payments made by student borrowers toward PSLF, regardless of loan program (this includes loans and payment plans that were not previously eligible). o The deadline to apply to take advantage of this waiver is October 31, 2022 From the Department of Education: “Your employer still needs to be a governmental organization, a 501(c)(3) organization, or a not-for-profit organization that provides a designated public service to get PSLF under normal rules and the Limited PSLF Waiver.” Source: https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/ fact-sheet-public-service-loan-forgiveness-pslfprogram-overhaul For more information and to find out if you may qualify, visit: • https://studentaid.gov/announcementsevents/pslf-limited-waiver • https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/ fact-sheet-public-service-loan-forgivenesspslf-program-overhaul Additionally, if you are a current AFT member: “The AFT will help you navigate this new process with our partner Summer. Working with Summer, AFT members already have saved $500 million on student loans. Summer helps AFT members take the steps necessary to qualify for PSLF, including under the just-announced temporary waiver. AFT members can sign up for a free account with Summer here: https://www. meetsummer.org/pslf“ If you are a borrower who works in public service and want individualized help from a PSLF expert, you can join the AFT as an associate member now and access a Summer account: https://www.aft.org/joinsummer“ The Ohio Nurses Foundation is now accepting applications for all ONF scholarships! Use the link below to view the complete list of the available 2022 scholarships and their corresponding applications. All winners will be awarded at the Nurses Choice Awards in the spring. The deadline for all applications is January 15, 2022. http://ohionursesfoundation.org/ scholarships-and-grants-3/
December 2021 Ohio Nurse Page 5 The New Norm: After COVID-19 Jondra Long, MS, BSN, RN, CHSE & Kris Cope, DNP, RN, NE-BC Prior to COVID, we walked around knowing there were diseases we could contract, yet we did not think about the possibility that they could kill us. Travel has changed especially public transportation. Cho and Park (2021), recall that overcrowding impedances were previously evaluated through a random parameter mixed logit model. Now that volume is down and new cleaning procedures are required because of the pandemic, policies and procedures for public transportation have changed for the safety of their passengers (Cho & Park, 2021). Restaurants have also taken a huge hit because of COVID. According to Wallace (2021) when indoor dining was cancelled, local family restaurants relied on carryout and delivery to stay open. If they had outdoor seating, with the six foot social distancing mandate, less patrons could be served. This was very difficult for small food businesses. Amazon and grocery stores ran low on supplies and came up with no touch grocery loaders or truck drivers that would deliver to your home or car. The convenience of this service may continue for mothers with children and the elderly that had a difficult time maneuvering the grocery prior to COVID. In healthcare, COVID hit in many ways. Patients avoided care for routine screenings and chronic conditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 32% of adults in the United States did not seek routine services because of fears surrounding the virus (Czeisler et al., 2020). Although we are still in the midst of the pandemic, some of the new practices could become new habits. As advocates for public health and routine screenings, we can only hope that this does not set us back. Masks have become the new norm and the most controversial. To wear or not to wear a mask, that is the question now. With the media daily reporting on the Delta Variant, the public is not as compliant any longer. One reason is when it was announced that masks were not necessary if vaccinated, the public stopped wearing masks. Stores no longer required them if vaccinated. The public began to remember what it was like to not wear a mask. No one wants to put it back on, yet here we are. The CDC is now recommending even fully vaccinated individuals should wear a mask indoors, as of July of this year (Doucleff, 2021). How does one know who is vaccinated? Chicago FBI warns their residents about vaccination fraud cards that they are seeing in the public (FBI, 2021). When individuals have recently been allowed to go to a mass gathering if they showed their vaccination card or proof of testing negative for COVID, those unvaccinated found a counterfeit vaccination card to get into the venue. Presently Chicago has another large outbreak of COVID. According to Blais et al. (2012), one’s “eyes are not the window to basic emotions”, but it’s your mouth that has the most “discriminative motions across expressions” (Blais et al., 2012, p. 2830). So the face coverings do not allow us to know what others are thinking or feeling. Those with impaired hearing can’t read lips anymore. This is causing social disruption in communication and the ability to communicate with others. In my professional opinion, I believe after COVID we will have several social issues from face coverings. With COVID, we are now aware that there are diseases that can kill us, but prevention is the key to survival. We can decease our exposure to these killer disease by following the CDC guidelines (CDC, 2021). Education to our patients and their families on proper wearing of face masks and social distancing need to be reinforced. We cannot tell if someone is vaccinated because they are not wearing a mask now. We cannot expect that everyone carries their vaccination card. So, enforcing wearing of face masks and social distancing when indoors must continue to be mandated to keep us all safe, for our protection and that of our families. We need to encourage the return and continuance of activities intended to keep us safe, healthy, and happy. We need to create our own “new norm”. References Blais, C., Roy, C., Fiset, D., Arguin, M., & Gosselin, F. (2012). The eyes are not the window to basic emotions. Neuropsychologia, 50(12), 2830–2838. https://www.sciencedirect.com/ science/article/abs/pii/S0028393212003491 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021). Delta variant: What we know about the science. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-variant.html Cho, S. H., & Park, H. C. (2021). Exploring the behavior change of crowding impedance on public transit due to COVID-19 Pandemic: Before and after comparison. Transportation Letters, 13(5/6), 367-374. https://doi.org/10.1080/19427867.2021.1897937 Czeisler, M. É., Marynak, K., Clarke, K. E. N., Salah, Z., Shakya, I., Thierry, J. M., Ali, N., McMillan, H., Wiley, J. F., Weaver, M. D., Czeisler, C. A., Rajaratnam, S. M. W., & Howard, M. E. (2020). Delay or avoidance of medical care because of COVID-19-related concerns - United states, June 2020. MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 69(36), 1250- 1257. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6936a4 Doucleff, M. (2021, July 30). Vaccinated people can spread the Delta Variant, CDC research indicates. [Radio broadcast transcript]. NPR. https://www.npr. org/2021/07/30/1022909546/vaccinated-people-can-spread-the-delta-variant-cdcresearch-indicates Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2021, May 13). FBI-Chicago warns Illinois residents about COVID-19 vaccination card fraud. https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/chicago/ news/press-releases/fbi-chicago-warns-illinois-residents-about-covid-19-vaccinationcard-fraud Wallace, T. (2021). Restaurants praying for a post-lockdown party. Daily Telegraph (London), 8.
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