[amb23]

The labor of medical residents is something hospital systems exploit during normal times, but that exploitation has severely deepened during the pandemic. At the hospital my partner works at, respiratory therapists and nurses got a $10k bonus for working during COVID; the residents got nothing despite working insane hours in ICU, routinely working more than the legally mandated 90 hours per week. Just because doctors earn more later in their careers does not excuse the level of labor exploitation they are subject to during residency.

Stanford is not the only hospital system to restrict access to the vaccine from frontline residents. I can name 3 other local hospital systems in my city that have vaccinated administrative & C-suite/VP level staff before doctors, nurses, and other frontline employees. If vaccine allocation is getting messed up this early on within these closed systems, I can't help but think the next 2-3 phases will go awry as well--what checks are in place to ensure these vaccines get distributed to grocery store workers before people who are willing to pay more to get it early?

[davidf560]

> I can name 3 other local hospital systems in my city that have vaccinated administrative & C-suite/VP level staff

I don't understand why society is putting up with this. Right now if you're not in a daily COVID-facing role (i.e. an actual front line medical worker) or in a nursing home you should not be getting the shot. This makes my blood boil. There should have been laws passed regarding ordering of the distribution with criminal penalties for line jumpers like this.

There's an article in our local paper with a happy picture of one of our state's congressional representatives (a healthy 34-year-old!) getting the shot. Like WTF? There's doctors and nurses who are treating covid patients who can't get it yet. Why the heck does Congress get priority over them?

Not only do these people have no shame, half of them even have the nerve to brag about it to the rest of us plebes who will have to wait months or more to get it.

[edoceo]

And all is plebs do is comment on their actions. If they have no consequences why would they stop screwing us?

[lambda_obrien]

Now you see why social media is so powerful. People just bitch and do nothing about this stuff, it's the perfect tool for pacification. Right now I'm bitching but next I'm going to go play video games, so you can see how it works even when you know it's there.

[joe_the_user]

Yep,

Stanford resident acted. Health care workers at those other hospitals are apparently silent. That makes the difference.

[strombofulous]

Did it make a difference? They apologized after using many of the vaccines and promised "to make a change". The promise is incredibly vague and won't likely come into effect until after most of the vaccines have been given out. It means nothing

[purple-again]

There is a massive pushback against taking the vaccine going on right now. People coming up with a litany of different reasons not to take it. One of those reasons is a lack of trust in the government. If that smiling 34 year old has a lot of constituents telling him they are scared to take it because it might not be safe it becomes his duty to stand up and take it as early as possible with a smile on his face.

What ever happened to starting out with assuming good intentions?

[davidf560]

There's been plenty of healthcare workers splashed all over the news taking it already. More importantly, we're a long long way away from the general public even getting to decide to take it or not. If hesitation is still a concern in March/April, then congress could have done the PR stunt at that point.

Right now there's a huge shortage of vaccines compared to the number of people who are both eligible and willing. No need to worry about the unwilling at this point since there's not enough to go around anyway.

Congress took it because they think they're more important than the rest of us, and apparently they think they're even more important than the frontline workers who are still waiting.

[jedberg]

Congress is legally mandated to get it first, a policy that has been in place since Eisenhower:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_governme...

Of course it is unlikely that congress would ever change that law...

[s5300]

Ehh, I completely and truly agree with you/feel the same way, but because I'm feeling a bit cynical right now, I have to say - the congressional representative getting it can be passed off as encouragement for his constituents to willingly get vaccinated in a time where there's quite a vocal bit of people who think Bill Gates is going to be swimming through their veins in a tiny submarine if they get it.

Now - could he have just vocally stated "I am your congressional rep - I have full trust in the vaccine and encourage you all to receive it as I wait for my time in the line of priority"

Yes, yes he could've.

[mschuster91]

I agree that healthcare workers, firefighters and police should be the first ones to get the shots - and directly after them, politicians should, and that mandatory. Get the shot or lose your seat.

There are large parts of the population who say they won't get vaccinated because they're afraid that politicians exploit them as "guinea pigs" (especially the PoC community has a really bad history, e.g. Tuskegee syphilis study). Time to turn the usual situation around.

[to11mtm]

I like your list. I really hope to see a program where 'front-line workers' (i.e. grocery store workers/etc as opposed to 'first responders') are given priority -and- financial assistance to receive the vaccine if they so choose to.

[mschuster91]

> -and- financial assistance to receive the vaccine if they so choose to.

A decent government should fund vaccinations out of taxpayer money. It's simply way more cost-effective than having people around who want but can't afford vaccination and then society has to pay many orders of magnitude more for treating the illness...

[pdxandi]

My wife is one of these trainees left out by this "algorithm." She's an intensive care fellow and was caught up in this mess yesterday. It's really hard to witness considering how much I worry about her everyday she's on service.

My understanding is the training is capped at 80 hours/week, but they average that over the month. They definitely work more than that some weeks, but it's usually because it's not scheduled hours; it's shifts that run long because of emergencies or codes or whatever. When she was a resident and had to write patient notes, that definitely took extra hours each night after her shifts. It's brutal.

And for what it's worth, not all doctors make great money after training. In pediatrics, salaries are generally half what adult doctors make. For a lot of subspecialties, that's on par with average software engineering salaries, even after about 14 years of education and training.

[epmaybe]

small quibble - the limit is supposed to be 80hrs/wk

I thought about a top level comment to link this, but we are naming and shaming programs that exploit residents during this time.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZgEKvTr1lvTLHsREeill...

[reaperducer]

I can name 3 other local hospital systems in my city that have vaccinated administrative & C-suite/VP level staff before doctors, nurses, and other frontline employees.

What's stopping you?

[stainforth]

Is there a medical union?