Vaccine Protects More than Just You

Health care workers are among the highest priority groups for the COVID-19 vaccine. For good reason. There’s broad agreement that their work on the front lines is closely associated with high exposure to the virus. Additionally, regions, cities and communities do not wish to lose access to medical care due to temporary provider shortages caused by COVID infection outbreaks among health care providers. Several studies confirm that COVID infection among vaccinated health care workers is extremely rare. “The effect of vaccination on our workforce has been dramatic,” the authors of a New England Journal of Medicine found. “We observed a greater than 90% decrease in the number of employees who are either in isolation or quarantine.”

These finding suggest that the COVID vaccine is actually protecting more than just the health care workers that have been vaccinated. By decreasing isolation and quarantine of health care workers, the vaccine is preserving the unique relationship between physician and patient. Vaccinated health care workers mean that critical steps in patient treatment plans are not delayed or rescheduled because the treating physician has become a patient himself, patients continue to be supported by the care team that knows them best and patients, caregivers and physicians can once again joyfully embrace when news of remission is given.

The physician-patient relationship must be shielded from interference. That interference can take the form of a virus, insurance plan middlemen with inadequate clinical experience that seek to influence medical treatment decisions or the red tape that grips health care. Patients and Providers United will continue to amplify the voices that seek to protect and strengthen that physician-patient relationship because it is among the most important elements of medicine.