Opinion/Costello: Vaccine mandate for health workers vital for patients

Joanne F. Costello is a professor of nursing at Rhode Island College. Nurses Maureen Bouris, Erin Abrahamsen and Denise Brennan contributed to this commentary.

We wanted to respond to a letter to the editor ("Vaccine mandate a violation of our rights," Sept. 13). First, we want to express our gratitude for those who work in the health-care field, which can be extremely stressful under the best of circumstances but has been especially demanding — both physically and emotionally — as well as dangerous during the COVID pandemic.

Over 115,000 health-care workers have died worldwide, approximately 3,600 of those in the U.S. Health-care workers are true heroes.  

While we appreciate all that health-care workers have done during the pandemic, we fully support mandating vaccines for them. It is a clear patient safety issue, and any institution that allows health-care workers who are not COVID-vaccinated to provide care is negligent, putting patients at risk for death and severe illness.

Patients have the right to know that they can safely seek care and be taken care of by workers who have the highest level of protection possible. Just as we cannot choose to not wash our hands between patients or to not wear gloves for a sterile procedure or to take care of pregnant women without being vaccinated for Rubella, we cannot provide care and choose to not be vaccinated against COVID-19. Many patient safety policies exist, and this is just one more that is necessary and appropriate. 

We are so fortunate to have vaccines available to protect us from severe illness and death. COVID vaccines are safe, effective, FDA approved, and no evidence exists that fertility is impacted by the vaccine, as expressed in the letter to the editor. In fact, a recent study shows that a COVID vaccination during pregnancy provides protection to both the mom and the baby.  

We are nurses who have a combined 127 years of experience in areas of nursing including long-term care, community/public health, and acute care. Each of us has a parent who died after getting COVID in a health-care facility. Throughout our state, health facilities have been highly impacted by health-care workers unintentionally exposing residents. While we cannot control every aspect of the pandemic, as professionals we must do all that we can to protect our patients, our coworkers, our families and our communities. 

Health-care workers not being vaccinated has real consequences for real patients, patients who are wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, who are loved and will be missed by family and friends. Thank you to the vast majority of health-care workers who have chosen to be vaccinated.

We respect the “American rights” of workers who have chosen not to be vaccinated, but these individuals should not be allowed in the role of a health-care worker. Many other available lines of work exist which they can choose that will not put vulnerable patients at risk.