- An increasing number of unvaccinated people are being hospitalized or dying from COVID-19 in the United States.
- This has sparked discussions about whether doctors have the right to refuse care for patients who choose to remain unvaccinated.
- Although some healthcare professionals can choose which patients they will see, denying treatment to certain groups is seen as unethical.
- Doctors also have a duty not to discriminate based on race, gender, or religious beliefs, among others.
Now that vaccines are widely available and accessible in the United States, many healthcare professionals are experiencing compassion fatigue when patients who knowingly choose to remain unvaccinated wind up hospitalized with life threatening COVID-19 complications that could have been prevented with vaccination.
One doctor in Alabama said he will no longer treat unvaccinated patients.
“We do not yet have any great treatments for severe disease, but we do have great prevention with vaccines. Unfortunately, many have declined to take the vaccine, and some end up severely ill or dead. I cannot and will not force anyone to take the vaccine, but I also cannot continue to watch my patients suffer and die from an eminently preventable disease,” the doctor wrote in a letter sent to patients.
Although many healthcare professionals across the country are experiencing compassion fatigue, part of the job is meeting patients where they’re at.
Independent physicians can technically choose who they do or don’t treat, but all in healthcare have an ethical and moral obligation to treat patients regardless of their beliefs and behaviors.
Consequently, most health experts don’t expect unvaccinated patients to face barriers to accessing medical care.
Source: healthline