Want to speed COVID-19 vaccinations? Nurses are trained and ready to help

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the greatest challenges our country has ever faced. The recent emphasis has been on treatment, and inpatient facilities and nursing staff have borne the burden.

There is hope – in prevention. We now have effective vaccines that can prevent the spread of the coronavirus and save hundreds of thousands of lives in the U.S. alone. It is time to mobilize prevention efforts, and that means engaging thousands of American nurses.

The challenge before us is to ensure that a critical mass of people across the country receive vaccines and that the shots are distributed promptly, safely and equitably to high-risk populations, including the most susceptible and most vulnerable.

Since an intensive-care nurse in New York became the first American to publicly receive a COVID-19 vaccination, 31 million vaccine doses have been shipped from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. These vaccines provide significant hope to mitigate the pandemic, but only 12 million doses have been administered to less than 4% of the U.S. population.

The Biden administration’s objective is to vaccinate more than 100 million people in his first 100 days in office. That means vaccines must be both available in communities and administered in just over three months.

Unfortunately, we are already behind because of vaccine and storage availability, inadequate planning and communication about vaccination opportunities, and lack of trained staff to administer vaccines. Nurses can solve this last challenge.

The 1947 smallpox epidemic in New York and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic both saw mass vaccination responses in which public health nurses played pivotal roles, implementing clinics and optimizing planning and operations. Nurses can do this again.

All nurses are licensed to give injections. Public health nurses are more broadly trained and have a proven track record in the planning and implementation of immunization campaigns. Nurse educators in schools of nursing across the country train students to administer vaccinations, and their students welcome the opportunity to practice their skills.

Texas Christian University nursing students and faculty are partnering with Tarrant County Public Health, the city of Fort Worth and the Fort Worth Fire Department, applying a long-standing service-learning partnership model to make a lasting impact on the health of our community.

In addition to practicing nurses and nursing students, retired nurses have a wealth of experience and expertise to offer. With requisite, just-in-time training on the unique guidelines for managing COVID-19 vaccine distribution, they can be quickly mobilized to make our nation a safer place.

Nurses are well-equipped to follow established guidelines on vaccine distribution, to organize immunization registry processes, to assist in coordination and set-up of administration facilities, to address recipients’ questions and concerns, to help educate the public and to give the injections. Moreover, public health nurses partner actively with neighborhoods and across community, professional and geographic boundaries to reach our nation’s vulnerable populations. As the most trusted profession, nurses can communicate effectively and advocate for mass vaccination so that we may reach the goal locally and regionally and move the nation closer to meeting the overall objective.

Since the pandemic began, nurses in inpatient and outpatient settings have diverted from their normal patterns of care to bolster contact tracing efforts, COVID-19 response and treatment of acutely ill patients, all while aiming to mitigate the spread of infection. Reductions in primary care and preventive efforts have resulted in fewer patients seeking routine and urgent care.

Delays in routine healthcare, scheduled vaccinations and recommended screenings ultimately result in higher morbidity and mortality. Having more nurses engaged in COVID-19 vaccination efforts will promote the return to preventive care and other high priority, routine activities more quickly.

Political and public health leaders in every community must reach out to nurses who will answer the call to action and help our nation meet the vaccination goal. This can be achieved by actively working with state nurse licensing boards to reach all licensed nurses in urban, suburban and rural jurisdictions across America.

Nurses who are not currently employed could be deployed to assist with COVID-19 vaccination efforts, too. Nurses can be easily identified and registered through state volunteer emergency personnel registries. These registries offer opportunities for healthcare professionals to respond in emergencies in collaboration with traditional and nontraditional health care partners.

Nurses can get those vaccines out of freezers and into arms.