I don’t deny any of that. It’s the main sore point for the staff. We have always known we need more staff. But the management is stingy. It seems to operate on the idea that if we manage with this many people, we don’t need more. But since when has management been staff-friendly?
Well obviously there’s no union so you’re on your own 
Maybe people should take (legit) sick days when they have to and cause the problems you are worrying about. Forcing your staff to come in sick having them puking in your workplace is certainly not the way to run a business.
Hope you feel better BTW.
I do. Thanks for asking 
It’s not a case of anyone forcing me in. Perhaps this has been blown out of proportion. I came in, and we generally come in if feeling under the weather so that the shifts are covered. No boss has formally told us we must do this, but we do it so that our colleagues and friends don’t have to do double shifts, which I suspect are illegal anyway.
No, the problem with the management is not that they force us to do this. It’s that they don’t allow us more staff. I have even mentioned this to my MD on occasion. His words were something along the lines of “We simply can’t afford another staff member” I left it at that.
A few weeks ago we were actually promised two more staff members, but then a few days later some brown smelly stuff hit a wind generating device, and the new staff idea was put onto a back burner. (I made a thread about what happened)
At best, it puts the patients at unnecessary risk. At worst, it kills them.
Pretty much with impunity. “Yes, your mother was intubated because of the severe asthma, and then she just happened to get the flu. We gave her thousands of dollars’ worth of antivirals, but we couldn’t save her. Sometimes these things just happen, and it’s nobody’s fault.”
Yes, it does happen. But sometimes somebody is to blame for introducing the virus under predictable circumstances. There is no way to prove the bug came from one person rather than another, though, so the attending is safe.
The attending, meanwhile, gets to pull rank on somebody who’s powerless and feel compensated for all the similar shit he got when he was the peon. This is no more acceptable in medicine than anywhere else in life, but it goes on.
The resident’s other choices are refuse and risk a failing grade (takes time and energy to appeal, while working at a dead run to finish the next workload) or simply collapse and be rushed to Emergency. The bully looks like such an ass for retaliating he will probably be deterred in that case.
I was lucky to train under decent residents and attendings, and I had no idea this kind of shit still went on until I heard it myself as an instructor.
I should think that “not allowing more staff” is pretty much the same thing as “forcing you to come in sick.” They’re counting on your tender-heartedness for your co-workers to run the company cheaply for them. Exploitation of your better feelings, pretty much. What they really can’t afford is for everyone to come down with a serious flu bug all at once; they have no back-up plan, and are inviting that problem–which is stupid.