While it may sound like I am practicing for a career change, from family medicine into car or sports card sales, I do sometimes feel a bit as if I am selling better health choices to my patients.
I suspect that I am not alone among my fellow physicians. Each day we “sell” our patients on the benefits of eating better, taking medicines more consistently, exercising more, scheduling that screening exam they have been putting off, etc. Those types of health behavior changes are incredibly important and can often be difficult behaviors to change.
Convincing a patient to get a COVID-19 vaccine seems like it should be a relatively easy task, by comparison, and yet we physicians know that is not necessarily the case.
After months of decline – COVID-19 cases, percent positivity, hospitalizations and deaths have all increased by more than 75% since June 1, 2021. Utah currently has the 5th highest case rate in the country.
This frightening case increase is being driven by the unvaccinated population. The unvaccinated case rate is six times higher than the vaccinated case rate. And the dominant variant spreading now, Delta, is scary. With a transmission rate of approximately 50% higher than other variants, it is spreading at an alarming rate.
One model out of London shows that someone with the original strain of COVID, without immunity or intervention, could infect about 2.5 people. Someone sick with the Delta variant, without immunity or intervention, could infect as many as 5 to 8 people.
If you are not vaccinated and become sick with the Delta variant, which 5 to 8 people in your life are you willing to infect?
Your healthy lifestyle may not necessarily protect you from severe COVID infection. If you don’t believe me, pull up any number of articles regarding perfectly healthy individuals that have found themselves in the ICU, or worse. You are not simply risking your own health, but the health of those closest to you.
Many of my patients were desperate to get one of the three approved COVID-19 vaccines when they became eligible. Some were nervous, but felt more at ease when they learned that I, their own doctor, had already received mine. Those first few weeks and months of public eligibility we saw news coverage of people waiting in lines at mass vaccination clinics around the country and here in Utah. Those of you that fall into that category: Thank you.
But those initial months of lines, excitement and hope have gone from a roaring river of vaccination progress to a slow trickling stream. Which leads me to ask what I can do as a physician, and what can my colleagues do, to keep getting shots in arms?
I keep thinking back to how many patients agreed to get vaccinated once I did. This tells me that those who still need to be vaccinated need to hear the trusted voice of their own providers to help convince them. All primary care providers need to become COVID-19 vaccine providers. A lot has changed with storage requirements and it is easier than you might think. The state of Utah has sufficient supply and they will coordinate with you as a provider to get as many people vaccinated as possible.
My fellow providers, we must be the voice for vaccination in our communities. Find a way to reach out to all of your patient panels to motivate them to get vaccinated now. Encourage patients who have had COVID and recovered to get at least one dose to add additional protection.
Be open and honest regarding patient vaccine concerns. Embed questions on vaccination status in the clinic processes, ask patients how they have been handling the stress of the pandemic before bringing up the vaccine, and most importantly, have the vaccine available in your clinic so you can give it right away.
Be a leader in your community and part of the solution to this pandemic, so when an unvaccinated patient shows up in your exam room, you are prepared to ask, “What can I do to get you to get a COVID-19 vaccine today?”
Chad A. Spain, M.D.
Chad A. Spain, M.D., FAAFP, is a practicing family medicine physician in Murray and president of the Utah Academy of Family Physicians.