With health workers stretched out in response to a record number of coronavirus hospitalizations, jurisdictions are struggling to find additional hands with the skills needed to help shoot in the arms.
A report released by the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and the National Association of Governors in December mentioned 20 states studying recruiting nontraditional providers, including students, dentists, veterinarians and paramedics.
On Monday, the California Department of Consumer Affairs approved an emergency exemption that allowed dentists to administer Covid-19 vaccines. The move came as California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced state plans to aggressively accelerate the pace of vaccination.
The American Dental Association claims that dentists are licensed to administer the vaccine in several states, including Oregon, where the first U.S. dentist to administer a Covid-19 vaccine did so last month.
“Dentists are already trained to provide injections into objectively more complex areas of the mouth that often have jaw reflexes, major blood vessels, nerves, and a moving tongue,” the California Dental Association said in a statement.
Some health systems are taking advantage of a well of newly trained students to aid in the vaccination effort.
“It will be a team of really smart, educated young people who will be our immunizers,” Susan Mashni, vice president and head of pharmacy at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, said in December.
The University of Alabama at Birmingham usually attracts nursing students to help with annual flu vaccinations. For the launch of the Covid-19 vaccine, medical and dental students also took advantage.
“We have used some atypical vaccinators because we try to prioritize keeping our licensed nurses in bed,” said Dr. Sarah Nafziger, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “While we are deploying the vaccine, we are simultaneously facing a wave of patients.”
A “nice thing to see”
The university has even recruited public health students, who cannot shoot but have the knowledge to help run vaccination sites.
“There’s a lot of logistics involved when you have a vaccine site that processes more than 1,000 people a day, so it’s really been a community effort here on our campus,” Nafziger said. “It’s been a beautiful thing to see.”
Nafziger said most vaccinated UAB students do not pay. Like many people who give vaccines across the country, volunteers are offered.
New Jersey is calling on its citizens to join the state medical reserve corps, a network of health volunteers that is used to vaccinate. The state is looking in particular for retired health workers, who have the skills to administer vaccines and do not actively care for patients.
“Many retired doctors are standing up to act as vaccinators,” New Jersey State Health Commissioner Judy Persichelli said during a news conference Wednesday.
There is some paperwork in hiring vaccinators. They must be trained (a process of approximately two hours) and not everyone with the necessary skills to administer Covid-19 vaccines is allowed to do so.
Dr. William Reynolds, president of the American Optometric Association, says optometrists are an unexplored resource in the vaccination effort.
The association states that 19 states allow optometrists to administer drugs by injection, and in California they can administer flu and shingles vaccines, but they are not authorized to administer the Covid-19 vaccine specifically.
Reynolds noted that optometrists are widely distributed and willing to step in to help smaller, rural communities that may need help.
“We’re in smaller communities as well as cities,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of Americans live in a county that has an optometrist. Ninety percent of the Medicare population lives a 15-minute drive from an optometrist.”
He said there are few financial incentives for optometrists to help in the effort, but vaccinating the population as quickly as possible will help restore normalcy to their offices and the nation.
“We want to be part of the solution,” Reynolds said.