We were discussing the Disneryland measles outbreak at work, and I was appalled to find some of my co-workers refuse to vaccinate their kids. They (grudgingly) receive the vaccines they need to remain employed, but doubt their safety/necessity for their kids.
I must say, I am absolutley stunned. How can one be a nurse and deny science?
As a nurse, you should darn well know what the scientific method entails and what phrases such as "evidence based" and "peer reviewed" mean.
I have to say, I have lost most of my respect for the nurses and mistrust their judgement; after all, if they deny science, on what premise are they basing their practices?
You may be stating "fact", but you are doing it in a way that is condescending. Period.
Sure you catch more flies with honey... a valid point, especially when educating or having an honest debate.
But people with deeply emotional faith based beliefs (whether that is homeopathy or fundamentalist religions) that run counter to evidence don't really care about how facts are presented. They won't let facts get in the way and are offended by the presence of facts far more than by their presentation. So excuse people if they don't put the effort into an ineffectual sugar coating.
Sure, there is room for discussion when we debate public health versus personal freedom, less so when the choice that is dangerous-to-public is the choice unsupported by evidence.
There is no room for compromise when people perpetuate fear-based misinformation like the falsehood that autism is related to vaccines.
Lets talk about some of the reasons people might be anti-vax.
It used to be that you would get childhood immunizations and a TDAP booster every 10 years.
Now its more immunizations, add a hot button issue like HPV, plus include a flu vaccine that does not always cover the flu (mystery flu-strains; plus lie and say it does not make people sick), and a shingles vaccine that does not seem to be effective for older people.
We have overloaded the public with vaccines- if we stuck to the basics and used anecdotal evidence to convince parents (Its the same MMR you and I had as children, its been proven safe over the years). Instead we have made this into an all or nothing end game...
There has to be room for compromise when there is a cultural belief- to not respect that belief and work with it will make your patients run the other way: I believe in the efficacy of most vaccines and the fervor of super pro-vaccine nurses makes me shudder.
You'll be happy to know that during a debate in one of my nursing courses the was immunizations and all 25 students in the class were pro-immunization. For a while I thought that getting your kid immunized was just a given but both health care professionals and the lay public alike have taught me otherwise. A friend of mind who is close to finishing a PhD program (in psych) just posted on Facebook that she would not be vaccinating her child and that she'd done the research! Then she wrote about the the pharmaceutical industry, money, greed, etc. So "education" is no cure-all. When I go into my local hospital there are so many MAs, pharm-techs, and pharmacists wearing face masks because they refused the flu vaccine. It unfortunately has get to a point where Americans are suffering and dying from avoidable diseases that evidenced-based education catches on again. Maybe we've got it so good here that we've forgotten what crappy looks like? But nature, God, will show us. Disneyland was just the warning shot!
Sure you catch more flies with honey... a valid point, especially when educating or having an honest debate.
But people with deeply emotional faith based beliefs (whether that is homeopathy or fundamentalist religions) that run counter to evidence don't really care about how facts are presented. They won't let facts get in the way and are offended by the presence of facts far more than by their presentation. So excuse people if they don't put the effort into an ineffectual sugar coating.
I disagree- I live in Oregon which is ground zero for the anti-vax movement. I convince patients all the time by agreeing with them that they have valid concerns... I tell them that they should get the basic vaccines that have been around for a long time and skip the new ones (mostly flu)
Its hard to say no to a vaccine the decision maker had themselves without adverse effects... I could not imagine how quickly my interventions would be ended if I didn't sugar coat my words.
Making you shudder is safer than not vaccinating children.
Again, I never said no vaccines- in fact Im with you most of the way. But you had to end on such a nasty note that implies I am arguing to not vaccinate children.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
meh
I am not much interested in sugar coating my words for nursing professionals who prefer to be ignorant about vaccines and easily offended by mention of the facts or science behind them.
That sort of thing is nice for patient/parent education, but that is not the objective of this thread, IMHO.
I hope that you never decide to go in the military. You will have sore arms for a month, with all of the vaccines that you will have to get. They will space out the live vaccines, because there are regulations about how close together you can get live vaccines.
In addition to the usual vaccines listed above, you can add Typhoid (series of three shots), Cholera, Small Pox, Yellow Fever, boosters for these vaccines, every so many years, most of which are LIVE VACCINES, oh my!
If you happen to marry someone in the military, you, in addition to your children, will have to be vaccinated for regular diseases that children are vaccinated for, if you live on base, use base day care facilities, base schools, etc. I believe that there is NO opting out, either. Because of the transient nature of military personnel, over the world, they cannot take a chance of having un- vaccinated children, or dependents.
I totally agree with your opinion. I am also amazed at my coworkers who won't get the flu shot. Our hospital requires it, so the nurses who refuse it have to wear a mask until flu season is over!!
Someone explain to me please how it is that there is a group of people who are so distrustful of decades of scientific evidence that some celebrity like Jenny McCarthy can instill them with the fear they might cause autism in their baby if they vaccinate? How Jenny McCarthy saw a correlation that decades of science somehow overlooked?
Maybe because our society doesn't encounter these cases of small pox, measles, polio, in our lives, and we don't see the deaths/illnesses/damage of those diseases, we've somehow lost sight of their threat. It's been decades and, if we don't study history, it can repeat itself. Hopefully, we won't have to learn the hard way and can keep enough of the "herd" vaccinated to protect the non-vaccinated.
I have empathy for these parents. I do. I know these parents think they are doing what is best for their child/children, and I know that autism is very scary and somehow fear guides their decision. Unfortunately, there is a myriad of crap on the internet that is not objective nor scientifically based, but (to the untrained eye) looks somewhat legitimate. And, if a scared parent types in "vaccines and autism" into Google, I'm sure there are 40 million websites that reinforce that fear--making it more difficult to explain with reason.
It saddens me when a nurse doesn't vaccinate because we are supposed to have a trained eye to look at empirical data and research. We, a patient advocates, should be able to translate these scientific studies and explain them to the lay person. However, when a nurse embraces this fear of vaccines and can't see that "correlation is not causation," it makes me sad. As a nurse, I try to not be judgmental of others, but, when it comes from another RN, I struggle a little with not being judgmental.
Just the fact that Jenny McCarthy has been a large part of this campaign, might make someone take a second look.
Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
How one unvaccinated child with measles disrupted one family's life, plus most likely the lives of another 8 families who had infants too young to be vaccinated in a single practice that were subsequently placed into a quarantine:
SummitRN, BSN, RN
2 Articles; 1,567 Posts
Sure you catch more flies with honey... a valid point, especially when educating or having an honest debate.
But people with deeply emotional faith based beliefs (whether that is homeopathy or fundamentalist religions) that run counter to evidence don't really care about how facts are presented. They won't let facts get in the way and are offended by the presence of facts far more than by their presentation. So excuse people if they don't put the effort into an ineffectual sugar coating.