Some Big Apple health workers are furious that lower-risk hospital staff have been cutting the line to get the COVID-19 vaccine, sparking a fierce battle for life-saving shots, according to a report Friday.
Doctors and nurses at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and other medical centers are turning against each other after discharges have not given priority and regulating who gets the first blows, according to sources in New York Times.
“It’s clear we’re ready to cut ourselves,” a doctor at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital told the newspaper.
According to hospital rules, it was assumed that the most exposed employees, such as nurses and emergency physicians, should receive the vaccine first, followed by workers from other departments.
But employees away from the front lines, including social workers and employees working from home, allegedly entered vaccination rooms earlier than expected, according to the report.
A second doctor reported to the newspaper that the line break caused a “free of all” in the hospital for the first 48 hours after the vaccine arrived.
“I think the saddest thing is that people are starting to turn against each other,” the doctor said. “Can it be honestly said that this employee deserves it before me? No, but no one deserves it before anyone else.
Healthcare workers are the first to receive preventative shots according to the New York State distribution plan. But the state largely left individual nurses figuring out how to resolve the desired internal traits, and plans appear to have failed in some hospitals, according to the newspaper.
One week after the vaccines arrived, some nurses at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital had not yet been vaccinated while other workers were receiving the blows.
In an example of tension between employees, a hospital nurse confronted a social worker for allegedly skipping the line, according to the Times.
“She said,‘ Sometimes we have to go to the emergency room, ’but that’s not true,” the nurse said of the social worker’s response.
Failure to clearly prioritize at-risk workers angered some employees, prompting an apology from the hospital, according to the newspaper.
“I am very disappointed and saddened that this has happened,” he wrote in an email to staff, obtained by The New York Times, a senior executive at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, New York Presbyterian, Dr. Craig Albanese.
In a statement to the Times, the hospital later said: “We are following all guidelines from the New York State Department of Health on vaccine priority, with our initial focus on ICU and ED staff. and equitable access for all. “
Meanwhile, at Mount Sinai Hospital, a doctor said workers could make their way to get vaccinated simply by queuing up and claiming to do “Covid-related procedures,” according to the newspaper.
“We feel underestimated and undervalued because of our second-tier vaccination priority,” a group of hospital anesthesiologists told administrators over the weekend.
In a statement, hospital officials said they were aware of only a few “improprieties” related to the vaccine.
Meanwhile, workers at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center were also frustrated by a long wait for the vaccine.
“There is competitiveness, skepticism and mistrust,” occupational therapist Ivy Vega told the newspaper. “It’s becoming a rivalry.”