Running head: Healthcare Employees 1

Should Healthcare Employees be Forced to Vaccinate or Face Termination

Name

Institutional Affiliation
Healthcare Employees 2

Introduction

Since its 2019 discovery in Wuhan city, China, corona virus has led to widespread

mortality that has caused both social and economic destruction. Efforts to get a vaccine for the

deadly virus were made in order to help prevent its spread and protect people from contracting it.

In most countries, healthcare workers were given priority to be vaccinated since they are the ones

at high risk of contracting the virus. However, some healthcare workers are still hesitant to take

the vaccine, something that has led to some being terminated. Some reasons why people may be

hesitant to take vaccines include their religious and cultural stands, the uncertainty surrounding

the effectiveness and safety of vaccines as well as the need to weigh the risks and benefits before

taking a vaccine. Whether or not vaccine should be made compulsory for people to take sparks a

lot of debate to date. The position of this paper is that healthcare workers should not be forced to

take vaccines. This is because; first, it is not the best way of ensuring that healthcare employees

prevent the spread of viruses; vaccines do not offer complete protection; and finally, is unfair and

does not only affect the healthcare employees but also affects the healthcare system.

Vaccines should ‘NOT’ be Mandated

Even though mandating the uptake of vaccines may seem to help to a greater extent in

preventing infections, it is not the best way of ensuring that healthcare employees get vaccinated.

Just like any other person, healthcare workers too have rights and freedoms. Most healthcare

employees are hesitant to get the vaccine because the safety and efficacy concerns. the process of

developing a vaccine is complex and long, often going for up to 10 years or more. However, this

has not been the case with covid-19 vaccine as the timeline for its development was condensed

due to the public health emergency. This has raised concerns about the safety and efficacy of the

vaccine resulting to the hesitance by healthcare employees. As a result, healthcare employees

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take time to weigh in how safe they will be as well as the benefits they will get from taking the

vaccine. Also, studies show that Covid-19 greatly affects people with vulnerable immune

systems including those suffering from diabetes, hypertension, heart diseases among others

(Hughes & Edgecombe, 2021). Therefore, it would be better if healthcare employees with such

health conditions are the ones mandated to take the vaccine while others are left to make the

choice of whether to take the vaccine or not. Forcing them to take the vaccine and terminating

them for failure to take the vaccine will be an infringement of their rights and freedoms.

Since vaccines do not offer complete protection, they should, therefore, not be forced not

only on healthcare employees but also other people. According to Wood (2013), all vaccines can

pose risks and even though one may not have allergies, they may be affected in one way or the

other by the additives and preservatives used in vaccines. Moreover, the fact that the vaccine

may not cause instant harm does not mean it will not cause harm in the long run. For instance, in

1976, a vaccine developed for the swine flu was found to increase the risk of a paralytic nerve

condition known as Guillain Barre syndrome (Evans et al., 2009). Therefore, those developing

vaccines should ensure that they assess the long term effects that vaccines can cause and make

them clear for people to understand and be able to make choices on whether to take them or not.

Terminating healthcare employees because they have refused or are hesitant to take the

vaccine is unfair and does not only affect the healthcare employees but also affects the healthcare

system. Healthcare employees like any other employee have responsibilities and people who

depend on them. According to Holzmann-Littig et al. (2021), terminating healthcare employees

means their lives will change not for the best but they will have no income to help them and their

families survive. This can lead to mental health issues like stress and depression among those

terminated as well as their families. On the other hand, healthcare employees are very important
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in any health institution as they are the ones that provide patients with care and treatment to help

them get better. If many healthcare employees are hesitant about taking the vaccine and they are

terminated, hospitals will run short of experts in handling patients and those that will be there

will be overwhelmed (Dror et al., 2020). When healthcare employees get overwhelmed, they

may experience fatigue, which may affect their duties and as a result, patients will be left with

very few or no experts to take care of them.

Vaccines should be Mandated

One of the greatest achievements in the health sector is the discovery of vaccines, which

can be traced back to the 17th century when Edward Jenner discovered a small pox vaccine in

1796. Vaccination has been proven to be one of the most effective ways of preventing diseases

since the vaccines work by triggering an immune response against targeted pathogens (Kearns,

2021). Being a healthcare employee means that one is at a high risk of contracting diseases since

they regularly come into contact with patients as part of their work. The organisms that cause

diseases can easily spread from a patient to a healthcare worker then to other workers and back

to other patients who may be suffering from other diseases. As a result, there will be more

healthcare workers who will be unwell and not able to attend to patients while on the other hand,

patients end up getting new diseases that they initially did not have. Since covid-19 is a highly

contagious and deadly virus that can be unknowingly spread by an infected person, healthcare

employees therefore, have a moral obligation to get vaccinated to ensure both their safety and

that of other people who they come into contact with both in hospital and outside hospital.

Health care employees may not be blamed for unintentionally infecting patients with new

diseases. However, according to the principle of responsive adjustment, someone who

inadvertently causes a negative or harmful occurrence is expected to adjust their behavior so that
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they don’t repeat the mistake (Kearns, 2021). In this case, if a healthcare employee who hasn’t

been vaccinated infects a patient, it is morally expected that the employee puts measures to

ensure that they do not further infect other patients. In the case of covid 19, one of the measures

that a healthcare employee can put in place to avoid further infection is by making sure that they

get vaccinated. Failure to adjust their behavior and prevent further recurrence of the infection

will make them morally responsible for the original harmful occurrence. To avoid these cases

where healthcare employees contract and even infect patients with diseases, it is therefore,

important to make vaccination mandatory for them.

Conclusion

Forcing healthcare employees to take vaccines and terminating them can be considered as

discrimination and those affected may face stigmatization, and may become untrustworthy.

Although vaccines are very important in preventing the spread of infections and viruses,

healthcare employees should not be forced to take them or terminated for not taking them.

Instead, governments should come up with strategies that will encourage people to take vaccines

without making them mandatory. Some of the approaches that governments should adopt include

open dialogue addressing specific issues such as sharing of information about the safety,

efficacy, risks and the importance of vaccines.

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References

Dror, A. A., Eisenbach, N., Taiber, S., Morozov, N. G., Mizrachi, M., Zigron, A., ... & Sela, E.

(2020). Vaccine hesitancy: the next challenge in the fight against COVID-19. European

journal of epidemiology, 35(8), 775-779.

Evans, D., Cauchemez, S., & Hayden, F. G. (2009). “Prepandemic” immunization for novel

influenza viruses,“swine flu” vaccine, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and the detection of rare

severe adverse events. Journal of Infectious Diseases, 200(3), 321-328.

Holzmann-Littig, C., Braunisch, M. C., Kranke, P., Popp, M., Seeber, C., Fichtner, F., ... &

Schmaderer, C. (2021). COVID-19 vaccination acceptance and hesitancy among

healthcare workers in Germany. Vaccines, 9(7), 777.

Hughes, M., & Edgecombe, K. (2021). Rights are balanced by responsibilities. Kai Tiaki:

Nursing New Zealand, 27(10), 21-22.

Kearns, A. J. (2021). Should nurses take a COVID-19 vaccine? Nursing outlook, 69(6), 1081-

1089.

Wood, R. A. (2013). Allergic reactions to vaccines. Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, 24(6),

521-526.