Some Big Apple health workers are outraged that lower-risk hospital workers have cut the line to get the COVID-19 vaccine – sparking a cut-throat battle for the life-saving shots, according to a report on Friday.
Doctors and nurses at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and other medical centers turn against each other after higher-ups fail to prioritize and control who gets the shots first, sources told the New York Times.
“Clearly we are ready to mow each other for it,” a Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital doctor told the newspaper.
According to hospital rules, the most exposed workers – such as nurses and doctors in emergency rooms – had to get the vaccination first, followed by workers in other wards.
But workers far from the front lines – including social workers and clerks who work from home – are said to have sneaked into vaccination rooms ahead of schedule, according to the report.
Skipping the line led to a “free for everyone” in the hospital for the first 48 hours after the vaccine arrived, a second doctor told the newspaper.
“I think it’s sad that people are starting to turn against each other,” said the doctor. ‘Can you honestly say this servant deserves it before I do it? No, but no one deserves it more than anyone else. “
Health workers are the first to receive the preventive shots under the New York State Distribution Plan. But the state largely left it to individual hospitals to figure out how to internally dispense the coveted shots – and the plans seem to have failed in some hospitals, according to the newspaper.
A week after the vaccines came in, some nurses at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital had yet to be vaccinated, while other workers received the shots.
In an example of the tension among staffers, a nurse at the hospital confronted a social worker for going overboard, according to the Times.
She said, ‘We have to go to the emergency room sometimes’ – but that’s not true,’ said the nurse of the social worker’s reaction.
The failure to clearly prioritize workers at risk infuriated some staffers – and that led to apologies from the hospital, according to the newspaper.
“I am so disappointed and sad that this has happened,” wrote a top manager of the New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, Dr. Craig Albanese, in an email to staff obtained by The New York Times.
In a statement to the Times, the hospital later said, “We follow all New York State Department of Health guidelines on vaccine priority, with our initial focus on ICU and ED personnel and fair access for all.”
Meanwhile, a doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital said workers could fight their way to get a vaccine by simply standing in line and claiming to be following “Covid-related procedures,” the paper said.
“We feel disrespected and undervalued because of our second-class priority for vaccination,” a group of anesthesiologists at the hospital told administrators last weekend, the paper reported.
In a statement, hospital officials said they were aware of only a few vaccine-related “inaccuracies.”
Meanwhile, workers at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center were also frustrated with the long wait for the vaccine.
“There is competitiveness and skepticism and mistrust,” occupational therapist Ivy Vega told the newspaper. “It’s gonna be a rivalry.”