Dr Randy Tobler, CEO of Scotland County Hospital in Memphis, Missouri, has struggled to retain employees throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, dropping 10 of his 57 nurses in the principle hospital and three rural well being clinics.
“Our actuality is we’d like employees to work. And in return to your working, we’re not going to ask you to get a vaccine mandate,” he advised CNN. “There have been individuals within the hospital that freely shared that if the vaccine mandate occurred on our account or on anybody else’s, they might not work right here. That’s simply one thing they weren’t going to place of their physique.”
At Scotland County Hospital in rural northeastern Missouri, the distinction is stark: Simply 60% of the employees is vaccinated, in line with the hospital.
Amongst those that will not be is Sheila Balch, who works the hospital’s entrance desk and is usually the primary particular person individuals see once they arrive. Up to now, she has determined to not get a Covid-19 vaccine, however that’s not as a result of she doesn’t suppose the virus is a risk, she advised CNN.
”I do imagine Covid is horrible. I imagine it’s harmful,” she mentioned. “I watch individuals day by day. And I watch the worry in individuals’s eyes day by day … However I don’t suppose the federal government has the fitting to step in and mandate and inform us what we’ve got to do.”
Requested what she would do if Scotland County Hospital mandated that she get vaccinated, Balch mentioned she’d search for one other job.