An insider’s guide to vaccinations in assisted living
A quick look into the vaccine process, including how Macdonald Residence got knocked off the list and how vaccine hesitancy caught them off guard.
An interview with Linda Nilsen Macdonald Residence Facility Administrator
Q: Many assisted living facilities were struggling to obtain the vaccine. Was that your experience?
Well, we’re fortunate that the pharmacy that we contract with, Consonus, is one of the state and federal government partners for operation “Warp Speed.” But there were some challenges between agencies across the nation and Oregon that delayed the vaccine’s rollout and bumped us temporarily off the list.
We probably should have been vaccinated a month before we ended up getting the vaccinations.When we were able to schedule our vaccine clinic, our pharmacy (Consonus) went above and beyond to make it as smooth as possible.
Q: You held two vaccine clinics for residents and staff in February. How did they go?
Because we were later in the process, one of the benefits is that we could talk to a bunch of other assisted living facilities that had already done their clinics. We heard pros and cons about so many different things. For example, “Do we go to the residents’ rooms? Or do we have them come to us?”
We also had an agency nurse and a nurse consultant who had been part of other clinics, which was super helpful.
We did 160-170 people in the first two clinics - it was intense. The next one on March 8th will be a lot fewer people. After that, our pharmacy will bring us vials if we have six or more people that need to be vaccinated. Since our nurses give the shots, we’ll be able to continue to get staff and new residents vaccinated.
We had a few people that experienced some more than mild side effects, but not too many. Overall, I think residents feel really good. Their family members are especially happy that they’re vaccinated!Q: Was anything surprising about the vaccination process?
It’s really interesting to look at vaccine resistance. We only have a couple of residents who declined, but there was initial vaccine hesitancy from some of our staff. Understandably, people come with really different perspectives, feelings, and levels of trust – sometimes stemming from historical mistreatment by the medical system or our government.
It’s a careful balance of respecting our employees’ freedom of choice and getting a high enough vaccination rate to keep the virus from spreading within our community.After the first round, we had more staff come back and decide to get vaccinated. I’m pleased that we ultimately had a 75% participation rate among staff.
