Medical residents flooded Stanford Hospital Friday in protest after executives there Reportedly used an erroneous algorithm to determine the first wave of vaccinations and left an overwhelming number of healthcare providers working on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Of Stanford Medicine’s approximately 1,300 residents, only seven were selected as one of the first 5,000 employees in line to join the new Pfizer / BioNTech Vaccine, ProPublica reports. A letter to hospital executives signed by residents and reviewed by Ars Technica claimed that senior doctors and senior faculties who have been working remotely since March made it to the list while only 0.5% of residents were selected for vaccination. And to make matters worse, this decision came the same week that residents were asked to volunteer for services in the Intensive Care Unit – where they would likely be in close contact with covid-19 patients – while the hospital braced itself for an expected peak in cases, ostensibly because of the holidays.
In a ProPublica interview, Sarah Johnson, an OB-GYN resident who has given birth to babies by covid-19 patients, called this “the last straw” for hospital staff who already feel exhausted and overlooked after routinely risking exposure during an international health crisis.
“Residents are patient, we are the ones who have been asked to intubate, but some attendees who timed us at home are getting vaccinated before us,” she told the outlet. “This is the last straw to say, ‘We don’t really care about you.'”
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Residents called on Stanford executives to “vaccinate the front line” when protests broke out on Friday, both inside and outside the hospital. Dozens waved boards with messages like “First in the room.” Back of the line ”and“ #Healthcare hero. Support is zero. “
Stanford devised an algorithm to ‘ethically’ choose which of its staff would be the first to be vaccinated, but design flaws apparently put residents at a disadvantage from the start. Graduates of a medical school are usually required to complete some sort of residency program before they can obtain their medical license where they work under the supervision of other doctors. Because the position is temporary, residents do not have an assigned “location” to “plug into the calculation” that determines who would be first in line for the vaccine, one main resident explained in an email to his peers. And they tend to be younger, he added, which also makes them less likely to cut, presumably because of older people a higher risk to develop serious complications from the virus.
Stanford Medicine executives have since admitted they screwed up:
“We take full responsibility for the mistakes in the implementation of our vaccine distribution plan,” said a press statement by email to Gizmodo. “Our intention was to roll out an ethical and fair plan for the entire organization, and there were flaws in that plan that we are actively trying to fix, “
In an email to the staff rated by NPR, Stanford executives and deans apologized, saying they had discovered “significant gaps” in their development of a vaccine distribution plan. They went on to say they are in the process of correcting the plan and expect that hopefully next week, once a larger shipment of vaccines arrives, they will hopefully be able to vaccinate “a significant portion of our community.”
Residents are also asking for nurses, therapists, janitors, food service workers and other essential personnel who may have overlooked the algorithm to be included in those who qualify for the first round of vaccination, NBC reports. And ideally, they want to sit at the table while the hospital reconsiders its plan.
I can’t even imagine the frustration these residents must feel, as they risk their health and safety every day to be caught off guard when relief is finally in sight. And not to dismiss their fight, but the fact that their age put them at a disadvantage for receiving the vaccine way too close to home for me as someone who is basically immunocompromised their entire adult life. Hopefully Stanford can rectify this soon, as this pandemic has been going on for almost a year now and frontline workers have more than deserved the right to skip the line.
Update: 12/18/2020, 9:16 PM ET: Added statement from Stanford Medicine.