Perspective | For the unvaccinated but uncertain, these doctors have a plea and a plan - The Washington Post
She wrote about how she spent three neck-aching hours bent over him "pulling clot after clot out of his lungs" as the pictures of his children sat on his bed stand. She wrote about how afterward she went to the nurses station in the ICU, sat down and called his wife. She wrote about the words they exchanged.
Losonczy allowed me to read that personal essay, and I asked her if I could share parts of it with you because it offers a powerful and raw glimpse into what health-care workers have been experiencing. It also presents a side of the vaccine issue that has been muffled by politics. The scene detailing that phone call contains the word "please" four times:
"Can you keep trying? Please?" As she pleads, I can hear the faint giggle of a child in the background.
"Of course. I promise I will keep trying. But I am concerned that despite all we are doing, and all we will keep doing, he will not get better. I am truly sorry, but he will die. Listen, I know you are worried about the vaccine —"
"We weighed all of the options. Both had risks. We made the choice we thought was right," she interrupts.
"Yes … I know," I say as calmly and as compassionately as I can. "Look, you made the best decision you could at the time. But now, your kids need you. Now you know. You need to get vaccinated, if not for yourself, for your children. Please."
I heard myself begin to break … Their small faces. The notes hanging on his wall: "Dear daddy, I baked you a fruit pie. Please come home to eat it." "Daddy, I love you. Please get better soon. I want a hug. Tell the doctors I said hi." "Daddy, come home …"
As covid-19 caseloads go down and political tensions remain high, efforts to persuade people who have yet to get one of the coronavirus vaccines may seem futile. The national narrative tells us that lines have been drawn and people have picked sides. But if we look at the quiet scenes that have been playing out in area hospitals, a more hopeful picture emerges. It is one that shows the divide between the unvaccinated and vaccinated goes beyond red vs. blue, and that many people remain hesitant but not firmly resistant.
Among the reasons people have given D.C. health-care workers for not getting vaccinated: They worry it could make them miss a day or two of work. They don't have a primary care doctor they can turn to with questions. They heard from a friend or a relative that someone had a negative reaction to the vaccine.
"My sense is there are a whole swath of people out there who are getting the wrong information," says Losonczy, who has two children younger than 4 and splits her time between George Washington University Hospital and United Medical Center. She says that just by having short conversations with patients at UMC, which is located in Ward 8, a medical desert, she has been able to get one to three people vaccinated during almost every shift.
Monika Misak, a resident doctor who also works in emergency medicine in D.C., describes having that same experience. She says she has encountered patients who only needed someone to hear their concerns before asking if they could get the shot that day.
Those are the people — the unvaccinated but convincible — Losonczy and Misak hope to help with a new vaccine ambassador program at UMC. The two worked together to come up with the program, and in recent days, they received approval to launch it. Misak, who will spearhead the effort, said the idea for it came to her after watching too many Black and Latino patients die unnecessarily.
"I want to change this. I want to stop seeing what I'm seeing," she recalls thinking.
Misak, who was born in Egypt and grew up in New York, says that when the vaccine came out, she had close friends who were hesitant to get it. To convince them it was safe, she told them she administered it to her 87-year-old grandmother, something she would've never done if she had any doubts.
"Being able to talk to someone who is not judgmental, who is not coming from a political stance, really does help," she says.
Now that the program has received approval, the plan calls for recruiting at least three medical students, training them to talk with people about the vaccine and then scheduling them to work shifts at UMC so they can have those conversations with patients. UMC offers the program a unique chance to reach people other medical professionals aren't seeing. For many residents who live east of the river, it serves as their primary source of medical care.
"It's not about forcing people," Misak says of the effort. "It's just about spreading good education or good information that is scientifically based, so they can have all the information they need to make informed decisions."
In that personal essay Losonczy wrote for The Things They Carry Project, she described how that conversation with her patient's wife ended.
Thinking of my own small children, I break. "Please," I beg her, as the tears begin to well. "Please, please, just get the vaccine…"— and I am suddenly grateful that all we have is the telephone, and she cannot see the tears streaming down my face for all the lives still to be lost at the hands of misplaced fear and lies.
"I can tell you are truly concerned. I will think about it."
"Thank you" is all I can muster, before I am called back into the room as her husband begins to bleed again.
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