AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) Chief Health Care Officer Janis Orlowski, MD, MACP, issued the following statement urging mandatory vaccinations to continue in hospital and patient care settings:
“As the nation faces additional surges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the AAMC today reiterated the importance of maintaining COVID-19 vaccination mandates for health care personnel in hospital and patient care settings and urged all health care personnel to get fully vaccinated against the virus. The AAMC represents the nation’s teaching hospitals and medical schools.
The science is unequivocal. COVID-19 vaccinations protect patients and save lives.
With hospitals again nearing or at capacity and nonurgent surgeries again being canceled in some regions because of COVID-19 surges among unvaccinated individuals and health care workforce shortages, it is imperative that health care institutions continue to require vaccination for all health care personnel for the health and safety of our patients and communities.
We have heard from health care leaders at AAMC-member institutions that they support COVID-19 vaccine mandates for health care personnel and that critical workforce shortages may be impacting the continued implementation of these mandates. However, the ethical commitment of all health care personnel to put patients first means that no patient should be placed at risk because caregivers and health care workers are not vaccinated. The health and well-being of our patients and staff must be paramount.
We urge our health care colleagues to get vaccinated and health care leaders to continue vaccine mandates in the nation’s hospitals and health care settings.”
For more information and resources to boost vaccine confidence among health care workers and in communities, go to VaccineVoices.org, a project of the AAMC and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.