Resident refusing reassignment/fear of COIVD-19

[Anonymous]

Has any one had any residents that are refusing to care for patients with COVID-19/ be reassigned to other departments where there is a high volume of these patients solely because of general fear of exposure?

We have one and we are not sure how to handle her. We don’t want to make her feel that her concerns are not valid, but at the same time she doesn’t seem to be reacting like a physician or even a reasonable person. She is entirely consumed by COVID-19- so much so that we had to pull her from her recent service because she couldn’t appropriately care for patients. She sent an email demanding that the policy for masks be changed (2 weeks ago) because she had 3 ‘potential exposures’ in clinic; all of those tested came back negative and were asymptomatic… and essentially feels wronged somehow by being put in situations where she may have to come in contact with ANYONE that could potentially put her at risk for exposure. Now she is saying she has a medical diagnosed arrhythmia that she believes makes her a high risk for morbidity/mortality and shouldn’t be redeployed to another department during this time.

Of course- the other residents are seeing that she isn’t being listed when they are (and they have their own concerns, but still show up and don’t complain), which is causing the moral to diminish towards her… Should we have her get a psych eval?

GME isn’t comfortable saying she is/isn’t considered high risk, and HR directed me to our ADA contact to see if that’s something she could apply for.

Anyone else experience this?

[Courtney Matlach]

Hi Alyssa,

Sorry you are dealing with that, it sounds like a tough situation. Luckily, we haven’t had a problem with any of our residents refusing to care for COVID patients. At this point we have had to give up more than half of our residents to the hospitals general work pool and half of our attending staff is waiting to hear if they’ve been “deployed”. Nobody gave us a hard time about being reassigned, but a lot of concerns raised about the limited amount of PPE available. Everyone is doing the best they can given the situation. I try and check in with the residents as often as possible to see how everyone is holding up.

Best wishes to all

Courtney

[David E. Craig]

Hi Alyssa,
Do you all have FEAP (Faculty and Employee Assistance Program)? Of course, not knowing anything about her aside from what you shared it is hard to say, but a Psych eval seems like it would be a tough sell. EAP on the other hand can hep her deal with the anxiety and uncertainty. We have found them to be invaluable for helping our trainees (and faculty and staff) on a wide variety of issues. We can’t make someone go unless it is part of a remediation plan, but we can highly suggest it and even facilitate it if they are amenable. Sorry you all are having this issue.
Good luck to you,
David

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Please see attached for Penn’s policies regarding vacation/redeployment. In short, if house staff refuse redeployment they have to use vacation or unpaid leave.

Shannon

[Kim Reising]

Hi Alyssa,

So sorry that you are having to deal with this situation without much help from GME office and/or HR.We have an Employee Assistance Program that is available to help our residents in situations like this. Does your institution have one?

Kim

[Anonymous]

Thank you everyone for your support and advice. We do have an EAP and I had previously sent that information to all of our residents for them to utilize. I don’t think any of them have…

The PD, APD, and myself met with the resident today and she was amenable to our recommendations. She is going to try and obtain medical documentation about her condition, and if found not to be a qualifying condition she will likely apply for ADA.

Does anyone know the implications of ADA? If it follows their careers, etc?

Hope everyone is safe and well!

[Author]

Posts