Fears calls to force frontline workers to take Covid jab will lead to doctors and nurses quitting across Lincolnshire and Newark
An article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, suggests those who refuse, without a valid medical reason, should be redeployed or even suspended
It's feared calls for frontline healthcare workers to be forced to take the Covid jab will see doctors and nurses quit their roles across Lincolnshire and Newark.
An article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, suggests those who refuse, without a valid medical reason, should be redeployed or even suspended.
Lincolnshire nurse Mel Kerr says making it mandatory is not the way to go.
"Already within healthcare we’re facing a chronic staffing crisis and now you’re going to start mandating certain conditions of employment, well that is a sure-fire way to drive staff away.
"They are not going to want to necessarily be employed by somebody who’s going to forcibly make them have a vaccine that they may, or may not, agree with.
"It’s about focussing our conversations with those who may not be convinced to have it, to understand why, and to hopefully come up with a conclusion that keeps everybody happy.
"Whereas this takes away completely that level of choice and that is just wrong."
She's now asking "where do you draw the line"?
"If you start talking about mandating vaccinations, there are many applications to this principle that really would just be way above and beyond what is reasonable in terms of ethical management.
"If we had medical staff doing this with patients, we would be ridiculed for removing the right for a patient to refuse treatment, and the role is reversed, we are human at the end of the day.
"We might be NHS and healthcare staff but we are still human and we reserve that right too."
The piece, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, suggests that unless staff have a valid medical reason not to get the jab, it should be a condition of employment.
They argue that the ramifications of not getting vaccinated would justify the move.
The Government has already launched a consultation on whether people working in care homes with older adults should be required to have a Covid-19 vaccine.
The five-week consultation was launched on April 14.
Now the opinion piece calls for more to be done to ensure wider healthcare staff have received a vaccine.
"We argue that healthcare workers refusing vaccination without a medical reason should be temporarily redeployed and, if their refusal persists after the redeployment period, eventually suspended, in order to reduce the risk to their colleagues and patients,'' it says.
Dr Owen Bradfield, from the University of Melbourne, and Dr Alberto Giubilini, from the University of Oxford, argue that making it a condition of employment, or of professional registration, is a "compromise'' between entirely voluntary or entirely mandatory vaccination policies.
They say, "Within healthcare settings, vaccine choices can have even greater ramifications which, when coupled with the seriousness of Covid-19, justifies at least a mild form of mandatory vaccination policy for frontline healthcare workers.
"We believe that this should take the form of conditional employment or conditional professional registration, although temporary redeployment could be adopted if this does not entail significant costs to patients, to vaccinated colleagues and to the healthcare system.
"It is plausible that this would be the least restrictive policy that is most likely to achieve adequate vaccination uptake to reduce transmission of Covid-19 from unvaccinated frontline healthcare workers to their patients and colleagues and satisfy ethical and professional requirements.
"The risk to patients and the community posed by unvaccinated frontline healthcare workers outweighs concerns that conditional vaccination policies are coercive, provided that public health messages engage with people from diverse communities and groups within society.''
Data suggests the vast majority of staff employed by NHS trusts in England have been vaccinated.
Figures up to May 2 show that 1.2 million staff who appear on the electronic staff record had received their first Covid-19 vaccination and more than a million had had a second dose.
There are 1.3 million workers on the electronic staff record, including 1.1 million who are frontline.