Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Covid-19 vaccine

Facing a dilemma. All the office staff (5 employees) refusing to take Covid vaccine. Have gone over the benefits of vaccines and vulnerability of patients with them. Any thoughts how to handle it?

Sounds like you have an educated staff of critical thinkers. Good for you.

1. Be aware what your state law says. In Texas, healthcare facilities can require Covid-19 vaccination, OR use of medical protective equipment (i.e. masks....) to prevent risk to patients, and even then only based on the staff member's routine and direct exposure to them. This must be defined on an individual basis. There are penalties for employers who do not adhere to the law.

2. For me, as the practice physician, I have chosen to be up to date on Covid (and flu) vaccination, as my education and information available to me was sufficient for that decision. Not everyone has a medical degree or can understand research data, and even those who do don't always agree. However, I bet most persons declining vaccination, who medically could be, would be vaccinated if you paid them a million dollars. So, if you are familiar with a certain Winston Churchill anecdote, can you follow that logic and consider offering a small bonus (financial or otherwise) for employees to get vaccinated?.

3. Your staff might be interested in Covid antibody testing, since some of them may have been inoculated via fomites etc. and have knowingly or unknowingly been infected already with the more recent strains. For these staff with demonstrable up to date anti-Covid antibodies I would consider them vaccinated until new strains with related vaccines are available. For other nonvaccinated staff I would just be extra careful (use PPE for direct patient care, avoid direct patient care for up to a week after any known positive contact, and consider limited patient care after extended public travel or crowd exposure (indoor concert and sports venues).

4. I suggest that you at least document that you asked your staff about getting vaccinated and you explained the pros (and discussed cons) with them and your policy for nonvaccinated employees. Remember, these vaccines are not 100% effective, and you cannot guarantee that other patients or visitors will not carry risk of infection into your office. However, making an effort to minimize risk, and documenting it is reasonable. So, having been reasonable, you can move forward and focus on patient care and the few other challenges that may arise from that... Good Luck!

Thank you so much for taking the time and writing such a detailed response. This is exactly what I was looking for. Needed some thoughts and suggestions.
I am in DFW area in Texas and looked up Texas Law. You are right, healthcare facilities can require employees to be vaccinated but I did not see anything in the law that provides more details such as how to deal with those who refuse vaccination and if there are any penalties for not requiring Covid-19 vaccine.
At the Quest lab, that we use, I do not see an option to run strain specific antibody test but it may be possible to run at another lab.
I have been thinking of offering financial incentive.
It is a great idea to have a Covid-19 vaccination policy and having staff acknowledge it in writing and sign waivers.

Regarding COVID strain-specific antibody testing.... I understand that you can just send a brain biopsy to NIH and wait 6 months. BUT, apparently you are not willing to take that little extra step.... Sorry, my bad, I could not find commercially available tests for this purpose, but on a research level whole genomic sequencing of samples is done to identify strains, which can possibly be detected weeks after infection, FYI... Thanks for the thank you!