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?
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
22 minutes ago, Robmoo said:
Please quit trying to put words in my mouth. It is getting rather tiresome. At no time did I say that varicella and COVID are similar. It is a joke. I'm beginning to regret that some of the people here have trouble recognizing sarcasm and have no sense of humor.
I'm certain that some Type A is going to quote this and say "so you think that COVID is humorous?"
Peace out girl scouts!
You aren't aware of what you implied with your careful wording? You are the one who said that you preferred "the old fashioned way" while referencing chicken pox parties. No words were placed in your unvaccinated mouth.
Specializes in Patient Safety Advocate; HAI Prevention.
It is hard to decipher sarcasm in an online post. Maybe it is best to say what you mean, and mean what you say. I think that most of us are exhausted by this pandemic and we don't really find anything funny about it at all. We are disappointed and disgusted with the behavior of some human beings and how cavalier they are about others. Some have thrown in the hat and given up on nursing because of COVID. It has just beaten so many down. Other nurses have been infected, and suffered, and some have died. I am retired, and just staying safe, and keeping my family safe is exhausting. It is essential that I keep up on things to do that. I honestly can't imagine working with the extremely sick patients with COVID. I commend the ones who have stayed in clinical nursing and I have all the respect in the world for you. Maybe it is time to cool down the joking around about COVID. It is just not a funny subject.
Specializes in Physiology, CM, consulting, nsg edu, LNC, COB.
On 7/21/2021 at 11:50 AM, AnLe said:
Back to the topic at hand. I would address the wife's concern by educating her that the vaccine does not prevent you from getting the virus, it decreases your severity. "A small percentage of people who are fully vaccinated will still get COVID-19 if they are exposed to the virus that causes it... no vaccine prevents illness 100% of the time" (CDC, 2021)
“Decreases severity” means that in the last series I saw of >1000 patients, NO vaccinated person needed hospitalization or died. EVERY admission and EVERY death was an unvaccinated person.
Specializes in Psychiatry, Community, Nurse Manager, hospice.
On 7/21/2021 at 4:55 AM, DesiDani said:
That is a false sense of security. Just because someone is vaccinated does not mean they cannot catch and then spread Covid. So her guard is naively down when her spouse has a nurse who says she is vaccinated?
Not a false sense of security. That’s like saying it’s a false sense of security to want your spouse to wear a seat belt just because you can still die in a car crash without one.
This is about reducing probability.
This is a very legitimate reason to refuse a nurse. I don’t understand why there would even be any controversy around this decision.
People refuse nurses for bad reasons all the time. Race is a big one.
The wife certainly had reason to do what she did to protect herself and her loved one. It was likely upsetting to the nurse too but I'm hoping that he or she can understand the context.
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toomuchbaloney
16,026 Posts
You aren't aware of what you implied with your careful wording? You are the one who said that you preferred "the old fashioned way" while referencing chicken pox parties. No words were placed in your unvaccinated mouth.