Replies

"Health care workers and their families need to receive the highest priority for vaccination, assuming a vaccine exists, and for access to antiviral agents that are active against the epidemic strain.

But WHO says that universal precautions are enough unless there is "close personal contact" in the healthcare. If push comes to shove, who knows where in the line HCW will be?

"Health care workers should expect hospitals to provide optimal protection, and someone needs to take the lead to resolve the current controversy about the need for negative-pressure rooms and N95 masks or powered air-purifying respirators versus surgical masks.

"..."someone needs to take the lead..." --good luck with that.

"What are the obligations of health care professionals to care for the sick at great risk to themselves? Historical experience on this point is varied. The Hippocratic Oath is silent on whether physicians are obliged to care for the sick. Many physicians, including Galen and Sydenham, are said to have fled patients with contagious epidemic diseases.

And I retired from nursing. My license says, "inactive status." However, I am still on a list somewhere, and I have no doubt that any warm body will be drafted. Willing or not.

"But AIDS, SARS, and smallpox have focused attention on the duty to serve, and a consensus has emerged. The American Medical Association Code of Medical Ethics states "that a duty to serve overrides autonomy rights in societal emergencies, even in cases that involve personal risk to physicians".

What are they going to do about that so-called "duty to serve"? Arrest us? OVERRIDES AUTONOMY RIGHTS EVEN IN CASES THAT INVOLVE PERSONAL RISK TO PHYSICIANS???? Oh, boy, that'll be great. A doctor who won't get close to you ordering an unvaccinated nurse who has just run out of gloves in a hospital overflowing with flu patients to take care of you, or be arrested? I knew this was coming. I warned about it.

"Some states regard the obligation to treat during an emergency as a legal duty punishable by criminal sanctions for failure to act or for abandonment of patients. Some health care contracts specify that health care workers are required to provide services in emergencies.

I didn't sign any contract. But I said this would happen and got roundly flamed for it. I have family and close personal friends that I'm committed to caring for. If they cart my butt off to a hospital to work, they are going to have to arrest me first.

"The moral obligation to treat seems obvious, but it has a possibly less obvious reciprocal obligation for institutions to provide maximum available protection, including antiviral agents, vaccines, personal protective equipment, and liability protection. "

"The MORAL obligation to treat seems obvious." Oh, really. To whom?

I fully expect some to get in this discussion and demand that licensed HCWs prepare to die for them. Friends, I will MAYBE do it voluntarily, but if you threaten me with arrest, you will have to find me first.