Today, the government asked for midwives and retired nurses to volunteer to give COVID vaccine injections.
I am trying to understand the logic of his request.
There are about 80,000 doctors who are available and who have medical records on their patients. Doctor’s offices have fridges. They have systems for storing vaccines. The public health folks certify their fridges as being appropriate for vaccine. They know how to dispose of syringes. They will get paid for doing the injections. They will record the injections in the medical records.
Why the midwives?
What does COVID vaccine have to do with delivering babies?
There are at least 3000 pharmacies in Canada with many thousands of pharmacists trained to give injections.
So why do we call on midwives to volunteer. Doctors and pharmacists should be paid for doing the injections.
Are we trying to save money by asking for midwives to volunteer. This is disrespectful to the midwives profession.
The image of the midwives who are hard working and competent professionals giving the vaccines at the Air Canada centre is a good photo op but not really a smart plan.
I vote for employing the 80,000 doctors and the thousands of pharmacists as one strategy to get jabs in arms once we have supplies of vaccine.
Time to think again about our strategy for the vaccine roll out.
Raymond Rupert patient advocate.