Unvaccinated nursing home workers cost families
Unvaccinated nursing home workers cost residents, families
Maxwell: Employers need to provide easy access to vaccinations, state leaders should lead robust education campaigns.
Few people have had it rougher during the pandemic than residents of long-term care facilities and their loved ones.
Lockdowns kept family members at bay while their spouses and parents suffered cognitive declines. And the conditions in which these vulnerable people lived made them even more even more susceptible to the virus.
But now, with vaccines available, many of these problems are preventable.
That’s why the story in Sunday’s Sentinel — revealing that 62% of staffers at Florida’s nursing homes and assisted-living centers still aren’t vaccinated — was so disturbing.
One caregiver called the situation frustrating, saying: “Staff members are choosing not to get the vaccine, and it’s the residents who are getting punished because their families are getting locked out again.”
It’s more than just frustrating. It’s maddening. The staff ’s actions have devastating impacts on others — people like my father.
My dad lives in a dementia unit up north where my mother was prevented from visiting him for the better part of the year.
Frontotemporal dementia is ravaging his brain, erasing most
of who he used to be. Without daily visits from Mom, things got worse. He stopped speaking.
This month, though, his facility reopened. So I caught a quick flight to visit the man who was once a brilliant lawyer and hall-of-fame high school coach; a man who now just sits and stares. He entertained himself by twirling a set of keys on a park bench.
Dad is still in a rough way. But after my mother started visiting again, he started showing more sparks of life. He uttered a few words and even made a few deliberate actions, including pursing his lips to kiss my mom.
Things were getting better … until last week when there was another lockdown. You can guess why. A staffer got infected. Not a resident or family member — the ones who suffer most in lockdowns. A staffer.
My mother is a patient woman. But she was beyond frustrated. I don’t blame her.
Similar situations are playing out throughout Florida. COVID cases among staffers at longterm-care facilities are up 20% over the last two weeks. That means more lockdowns.
Sunday’s story highlighted one South Florida facility, which had done better than most, where only two staffers refused vaccinations. Both got COVID. Now imagine a facility where 3 out of every 5 workers are unprotected.
This is preventable. Some caregivers and facility owners have discussed mandatory vaccinations. And I spent the better part of Monday getting sucked into a wormhole of legal discussions about the legality of such a thing.
The general conclusion from legal experts: It’s probably legal, the same way many health care employers already mandate flu vaccines.
That idea makes some bristle, including caregiver advocate Brian Lee, who runs the Florida nonprofit advocacy group, Families for Better Care. “I don’t know whether we want to force people to put things into their arms,” he said.
Still, Lee knows we have a problem, saying it’s “frightening” to think about so many unvaccinated caretakers. “It leaves the barn door wide open for COVID to get back in,” he said. “We know that’s how it’s coming in.”
Everyone needs to do a better job. Employers need to provide easy access to vaccinations — on site or with paid time off. And both employers and state leaders should lead robust educational campaigns about how vaccines offer widespread benefits vs. minimal risks.
Sure, there will always be some vaccine concerns and fears, some based on troubling history in this country. There will also always be exceptions for people with underlying conditions, allergic reactions or religious beliefs. And there’s the latest news about possible rare reactions to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. But there have been more reported side affects to flu vaccines than for COVID. They’re still extremely rare. And the medical community still overwhelmingly recommends both.
The bottom line: If we hope to get this virus under control and our lives back, we need mass vaccinations.
It’s a lot like the exasperating mask debates we’ve had for more than a year: This isn’t just about you. It’s about the people you might infect. Many staffers understand that. In fact, the caregiver leaders in the state’s service-employees union are running a social-media campaign, urging members to get vaccinated.
In it, one nurse says: “I got the vaccine for my family, my patients, and myself.”
Another says she was “tired of seeing the suffering and death” stressing: “The COVID-19 vaccine can help put us on a path out of this pandemic.”
That’s great. But it’s obviously not enough. A vaccination rate of 38% isn’t enough.
My goal isn’t to browbeat these workers. Many are overworked and underpaid. They perform thankless jobs feeding, dressing and cleaning our parents and grandparents. There’s a special place in heaven for the people who do this hard work day in and out.
But we need to do better. Among staffers. Among facility owners. Among the Florida politicians, who should be working as hard to promote vaccinations as they are to ensure people can take cruises without them.
My mother’s own tactic was a carrot instead of a stick. Rather than chastising anyone, she decided to organize a letter-writing campaign from residents and caregivers expressing “much gratitude” to staffers who got vaccinated.
In fact, she was preparing to send that letter just last week ... right before another infection came in and another clampdown of my father’s unit was ordered.