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Doctors at Stanford Medical Center who are completing their residencies and scholarships staged a protest on Friday, claiming they were ignored in the first wave of COVID-19 vaccinations, even though they were working directly with patients with highly contagious disease.
A few dozen residents and fellows carried placards during the protest outside a door where Palo Alto hospital was holding a photoshoot for reporters covering initial vaccinations. A protest sign read: “I have seen 16 Covid patients in the past 24 hours … More than double the number of residents receiving the vaccine.”
Some doctors have taken to Twitter to protest the vaccine distribution plan.
“The disparities in vaccine distribution can be seen at a micro level at Stanford today,” tweeted Dr Christine Santiago, a resident in internal medicine. “I am concerned that the situation we are seeing at Stanford is a harbinger of population inequalities in the distribution of vaccines to our underserved communities.
Another Stanford resident, who asked to remain unidentified for fear of reprisal, said only seven of some 1,300 residents and fellows were to receive the vaccine in an initial 5,000-dose distribution. Some ICU and infectious disease doctors were also ignored, the resident said.
On the other hand, some attending physicians who were working from home and who have not seen a COVID-19 patient in person since the start of the pandemic were to receive the vaccinations, the resident said.
“Stanford Hospital is neglecting its frontline workers in their immunization plans,” the resident said. “The 5,000 vaccines went to
[attending physicians] and many non-frontline workers, including those who worked from their couch and didn’t touch an N-95 [face mask] for nine months. “
Stanford chief medical officer Dr Niraj Sehgal apologized to the doctors who were not included.
“Despite our best intentions to carefully plan a principle vaccination plan to include our residents, fellows and faculty, it is clear that there have been several unintentional missteps,” Sehgal said in an email this week. “Be aware that the perceived lack of priority for residents and fellows was not the intention at all.”
Sehgal said the hospital is planning to receive more doses of the vaccine next week. “We are increasingly confident that we will get everyone vaccinated, including all of you,” Sehgal said.
The resident doctor who spoke to The Times said the problem appears to be an algorithm that frontline responders missed when the vaccination plan was developed.
Residents and fellows, who are working to complete their medical education, tend to be in their twenties and thirties, an age group considered relatively immune to the more severe effects of COVID-19. But the resident said in an interview that patients in their 30s at Stanford have died from the disease and some residents and fellows are living with their parents, who are at greater risk.
“My fellow residents have received COVID,” the resident said. “We have not received any instructions or promises as to when we will be vaccinated. It’s like a slap in the face after 10 months of long and hard work. “
Some other doctors, including full-fledged doctors who work in intensive care, were also not on the vaccine list, the resident said.
A spokesperson for the hospital said Stanford Health Care had taken “full responsibility for errors in the execution of our vaccine distribution plan.”
“Our intention was to develop an ethical and fair process for the distribution of the vaccine,” said spokesperson Lisa Kim. “We apologize to our entire community, including our residents, scholars and other frontline care providers who acted heroically during our response to the pandemic.
She said Stanford would immediately revise the distribution plan.
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