Few Healthcare Workers Left Their Profession Because of Vaccine Mandates
The Data Do Not Match the Narrative
The Facebook Group, Republican Women of Baltimore County (RWBC), continues to post medical misinformation around Covid and the pandemic. Let’s start setting the record straight.
Matthew McBride was asked to speak at one of RWBC’s events. He is a self-appointed “health policy expert” with no experience in clinical work. (BTW, RWBC, please check your facts: McBride apparently did not work for Maryland Health Department, nor is he a statistician.) I provide a link to Mr. McBride’s LinkedIn account: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-mcbride-mph-mshi-30313137/details/experience/
During McBride’s 15 minute presentation at a meeting of RWBC, I was able to note that he made ten errors and I’m still counting!!!! Let’s tackle one of his errors today.
McBride suggests that Larry Hogan is lying when the Governor says the vaccine mandates are not hurting Marylanders in terms of sufficient staff to manage hospital beds. A little bit of research would indicate that Hogan is not lying and in fact, Mr. McBride is incorrect.
We do have a shortage of healthcare workers, particularly nurses; but that has been the case for the past 20 years or so. The vast majority of our HCW’s did NOT leave due to the vaccine mandates. First, let’s look at historical turnover.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1251378/staff-turnover-rate-of-hospitals-in-the-united-states/
Rather a high turnover, correct? But why?
https://morningconsult.com/2021/10/04/health-care-workers-series-part-2-workforce/
It’s easy to find a variety of sources providing the reasons why healthcare workers have been leaving. Beyond the reasons cited above, I found:
Low pay – More $$$ as Traveling Nurse
Stress, burnout or moral distress
Patients belligerent, most often the unvaccinated
Quit or laid off at beginning of pandemic
Fearful of bringing COVID home
Culmination of 20 years of nursing shortages
PTSD from dealing with Covid deaths
Disabled with Long Covid themselves
Cut in salaries
Reduced benefits
Canceled raises
Forced staff to work more shifts
Failure in getting PPE
Expertise (experienced nurses and docs) retiring
Not enough educators to teach in nursing schools.
So, we have been hemorrhaging healthcare workers for 20 years.
Let’s look now at the loss of HCW’s as a result of vaccine mandates. I took the info from the reference provided below and put the numbers into a chart. I found it quite revealing and it can be used as representative of the impact of the vaccine mandate across the country. You can read the verbiage in the reference if you prefer.
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/hospitals/how-many-employees-have-hospitals-lost-to-vaccine-mandates-numbers-so-far
We have a total of 6397 people who left in the list above, due to vaccine mandates out of all the med centers listed here. That would look to be less than 1% loss of all healthcare workers from vaccine mandates with a historical 15-20% turnover rate? Therefore, no one can blame vaccine mandates for the loss of staffing in our hospitals systems, and therefore, no one can blame Governor Hogan for mandating vaccines as leading to disruption in our med centers. And note in Maryland that Luminis lost 134 HCW’s due to vaccine mandates, out of 8500 employees. And: “Despite the fact that roughly 2% of UMMS' unvaccinated team members are full-time or part-time employees in clinical roles, the system said it has planned carefully and does not anticipate any significant disruption in services across its 13 hospitals.”
I just gotta laugh. . . McBride is still pounding his theory as Governor Hogan is recognizing Healthcare Heroes Appreciation Week. McBride: “After he forced all these people to quit or be fired if they didn’t comply with his insane mandate to inject themselves with an experimental vaccine that doesn’t prevent infection??”
I’ve proven vaccine mandates did NOT cause Marylanders issues accessing healthcare during the surge. (There are other reasons however which we can explore another time.) Further the vaccines are not experimental as Pfizer and Moderna have received full approval. After millions and millions of folks have received the vaccine, I think we can drop the “experimental” nonsense.
And Mr. McBride, it doesn’t prevent infection? We will take that up in more detail next time. But for now:
I’ll take a 15x less risk of dying any day!