Patient Refusing Unvaccinated RN

MunoRN, RN · Jul 31, 2021

20 hours ago, Cinco said:

Robert Malone created the process for mRNA stability. This noble price winning doctor doesn't recommend this delivery system without more testing.

Robert Malone didn't create the process for mRNA stability and has not won any Nobel prizes. He did write a paper and contributed to the overall research on the topic of mRNA therapeutics back in 1989.

And despite preferring to change the subject to symptom management of Covid infections (he is currently attempting to patent multiple generic drug combinations to treat Covid infections) he has not ever said that mRNA vaccines are not beneficial or that they should be avoided.

20 hours ago, Cinco said:

Antigen tests ( rapids) are still in use, we use them all day long. PCRS take 45 to a hour and I think they are better but not much over 70%.

Antigen tests are still in use but they aren't what we use to measure the severity of the Covid pandemic, which was the context you referenced earlier.

PCRs have a combined false negative and false positive rate of about 5%, not 30%.

21 hours ago, Cinco said:

I will agree that N95s are less effective than the vaccine. Technology was developed in 1986, first human testing began in 2013. Yes vasopressin, rabies, caner drugs etc drugs were in experimental phases. But with how much testing. Never said the mutations will affect the efficiency of the vaccines. Plenty of cases of vaccinated patients being hospitalized which in turn will spread the virus. Read my post again.. Adverse effects happen within a consistent amount of time. Side effects however are still being reported for a long term studies. To say there isn't conflicting data on this is false. Nurses who think they know everything are dangerous.

I think you might have side effects and adverse effects backwards. Side effects of the vaccines happen in an extremely predictable time period.

Adverse effects are extremely rare, and in each case you are still more protected from those adverse effects by getting vaccinated than by not getting vaccinated.

For instance, your chance of embolic/thrombotic events from a Covid infection isn't just higher in 'normal' terms which would usually be expressed in a percentage. Your chance of such events is 18,000 times higher by being unvaccinated compared to vaccinated.

cgw5364, ADN · Jul 31, 2021

I think in this situation the family should be accommodated if possible. Simply being in the hospital with a sick loved one is very stressful and now add Covid on top of that adds to the stress. The patient's wife is stressed and scared of what could happen to her husband and is trying to have some control over the situation to lessen her anxiety. If accommodations are able to be made the wife needs to know that this might not always be possible and that the staff takes all precautions necessary to keep all patients and families safe.

allnurses Guide · Jul 31, 2021

13 hours ago, Horseshoe said:

All of the critics who say we are "lab rats" and are taking part in a "science experiment"

The irony: the people saying this are now effectively the control group.

allnurses Guide · Jul 31, 2021

23 hours ago, Cinco said:

Plenty of cases of vaccinated patients being hospitalized which in turn will spread the virus.

By plenty, you mean what percent of covid-positive hospitalized patients?

NurseSpeedy, ADN, LPN, RN · Jul 31, 2021

On 7/21/2021 at 3:41 AM, Delia37 said:

Just as the tittle implies, we recently had a patient's family refusing a nurse who is not vaccinated. As of now, vaccination at my facility is still voluntary; becoming mandatory after September 1st (we still have several staff on the fence about it). My understanding is that the patient happened to come in as a stroke, with a prior hx of prostate CA. Not sure what was the context of the conversation, but the patient's wife asked the nurse at the time if she was vaccinated (she was not and answered honestly...she could had refused); prompting the wife to request a different nurse due her fear of exposing her possible immunocompromised husband...the assignment was changed. The feeling of some of my co-workers is that we shouldn't had accommodated the request in support of the staff; however, many feel the wife had the right to advocate for her husband and had a valid concern. This has become a hot topic of conversation in the unit during downtime.

Have anyone come across to anything similar?? If so, how was it handled?

A patient can refuse a nurse for whatever reason they wish. Personally, I have moderate asthma and a few autoimmune conditions. I am vaccinated by choice. I personally am not afraid of someone giving me the “Delta” or whatever variant because I AM VACCINATED.

My 11 year old, who is easily the size of a 13+ year old (tall and muscular-skinny, not obese) is denied the vaccine at this time. IF for any reason she was hospitalized, which I hope is never an issue, I would be sure to have a VACCINATED nurse take care of her and not someone who could infect her because she wasn’t given the opportunity to protect herself and if she’s hospitalized she’s automatically more at risk because she would t be hospitalized bless She was already really sick (or had some freak accident).

Sorry, I’m all for the vaccine and it is so not a political thing for me. The vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe illness and death. Yes, they can still get asymptomatic infection with the variant but their viral load is likely to be very low compared to someone unvaccinated. I believe in choice to be vaccinated or not, but with choices come consequences-like your patient refusing your care-and yes, they have every right…or your facility is likely to end up on the news if they didn’t fulfill their request.

Tweety, BSN, RN · Jul 31, 2021

9 hours ago, BostonFNP said:

By plenty, you mean what percent of covid-positive hospitalized patients?

Where I work, and I work is massively infected Florida, stats are 90% of our inpatient covid patients are unvaccinated. So ten percent of our patients with symptoms severe enough to be hospitalized have the vaccine.

Apparently CDC is saying 35,000 vaccinated persons contract symptomatic covid a week. That's out of 160 million vaccinated persons.

Many people I think are asymptotic carriers and spreading covid including the vaccinated so I definitely agree with the idea that having a vaccinated nurse over an unvaccinated one is a false sense of security. Vaccines help the person.

A nursing home here had a symptomatic unvaccinated employee and tested all their residents and found several cases of covid and had to go on lockdown. None of the residents were symptomatic and all were vaccinated.

All of the staff we have out with symptomatic covid are unvaccinated.

The odds are wildly in favor of the vaccinated even though obviously some of them will get sick and hospitalized.

subee, MSN, CRNA · Jul 31, 2021

On 7/30/2021 at 9:57 AM, RN1987 said:

Oh well, they are free to go to another hospital for care.

In my head, I'm going to give you a pass on this on the assumption that you are very young and impulsive to say something so erroneous.

KathyDay · Jul 31, 2021

"A nursing home here had a symptomatic unvaccinated employee and tested all their residents and found several cases of covid and had to go on lockdown. None of the residents were symptomatic and all were vaccinated." The fact is that unvaccinated healthcare employees are much more susceptible to COVID, particularly the Delta variant, and can spread it where they work. I will encourage patients to ask and I will ask my caregivers if they are vaccinated. I don't think it is too much to expect caregivers to be vaccinated, particularly during an active pandemic of deadly virus. I will welcome mandates when they come. My hometown hospital is the first in Maine to put the vaccine mandate in place and I am proud of them.

toomuchbaloney · Jul 31, 2021

We will have mandates because some people will refuse to do what is right and correct and patriotic without a mandate. We are always governed by the rules needed to motivate the least motivated, the least patriotic, or the least altruistic.

toomuchbaloney · Jul 31, 2021

On 7/28/2021 at 6:10 AM, CRNA_SWFL said:

Good. Feeedom of choice for all. You can refuse caregivers, we should be able to refuse patients and on it can go.

What? You didn't know that health professionals could refuse an assignment?

londonflo · Jul 31, 2021

16 minutes ago, toomuchbaloney said:

What? You didn't know that health professionals could refuse an assignment

When HIV was new and misunderstood, any hospital personnel who refused the care assignment was fired where I worked. I would like clarification if things are different now or were you referring to private duty and travel assignments?

toomuchbaloney · Jul 31, 2021

On 7/29/2021 at 7:28 PM, Cinco said:

Absolutely not. I would encourage anyone who wants it to take it. My choice has nothing to do with anyone else. Definitely wouldn't push or criticize someone for taking it like people seem to be doing with people who prefer to wait. I take vaccines my kids are vaccinated, but having reservations about this is reasonable. Measles is extremely easy to spread . Everything I have stated is fact.

Your choice to share the flawed reasoning to delay vaccination does affect others...just like remaining unvaccinated affects others when you get infected and then spread the virus.

Measles is easier to spread than this virus now...but this virus is now twice as contagious as it was a year ago. This covid is more contagious than the other seasonal viral illnesses that typically hospitalize people in the Winter months.

Having concerns about these vaccines is not reasonable among health professionals, the science is pretty clear that the vaccines are safe and effective at preventing illness and death. Most of the concern is based upon flawed opinions of people who are not the accountable experts of record...they are social media driven ideas.