Doctor: The stinging words that brought a tough reality into focus

Editor’s Note: Susannah Hills is a pediatric airway surgeon at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center. She also serves as assistant professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.

Last month, a patient’s father looked me in the eye and said his doctors didn’t have their best interests at heart. I had never heard those words about a patient before, and they stung. Perhaps because I had just spent over an hour working through the family’s concerns, or perhaps because this has been a particularly long, difficult year.

Dr. Susannah Hills

A few days later, the moment came into clear focus when I heard President Donald Trump’s words at a mostly mask-free rally in Michigan – “Our doctors get more money if someone dies from Covid,” he said. This attack was directed at me and my colleagues, and it felt very personal.

Doctors are fighting a battle on two fronts. We are in the midst of a third surge of Covid-19, with nearly 200,000 new cases and over 2,000 deaths each day. Even as doctors enter our tenth month of fighting this deadly virus, our credibility and motives are being challenged and undermined by some at the highest levels of government, and on down.

In reality, many hospitals are in financial crisis and doctors are facing furloughs and layoffs. In September, 22 hospitals around the country announced layoffs of staff – including physicians.

Beyond the emotional toll, the exhausting hours, and the financial insecurity, the most demoralizing impact for physicians is the erosion of public trust. A poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed Americans’ trust in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dropped from 83% to 67% between April and September.

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The trust between doctor and patient is more important now than ever. Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford have all recently released promising early data on their vaccine candidates, with reported efficacy around 95%, and the first phases of vaccine distribution may begin as early as this month. But a lack of public trust in the medical establishment could set back Covid vaccination efforts.

Polling from the Pew Research Center released earlier this week shows that only 29% of Americans say they will definitely get a vaccine when it becomes available. Moreover, only 40% of US adults say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the public interest. The partisan gap in these numbers is remarkable: among Republicans, only 22% expressed a great deal of confidence in scientists, compared to 55% of Democrats.

Thousands of American lives will depend on repairing the country’s relationship with the medical and scientific communities and building trust in these Covid-19 vaccines.

It is a hopeful sign that one of President-elect Joe Biden’s first steps after the election was the announcement of his coronavirus task force. Fighting this virus seems to be a top priority of the next administration, and hopefully we can expect clear leadership from the White House that aligns with the guidance of the medical and scientific communities.

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Trust between Americans and the medical community will also rest on how Covid-19 vaccines are distributed. In the Pew Research Center poll, only 42% of Black Americans said they would definitely or probably get a vaccine, compared to 61% of White adults and 63% of Hispanic adults. We will need to prioritize access for the most vulnerable, particularly in underserved communities, who are most likely to die from the virus and least likely to have access to health care.

It will take tremendous education efforts and trust in the medical community to ensure most people get vaccinated.

Building trust in a Covid-19 vaccine will also require concerted efforts to help communities at highest risk. “The AMA [American Medical Association] has been working very hard to make sure that physicians are educated very well on vaccines… If physicians aren’t well-educated, we’ll never convince our patients,” Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association, told me. In addition, she says, the AMA is working to develop a public health campaign focused on vaccine education.

The road to overcoming this virus is long. The entire nation will need to come together, across party lines, to put public health first. We will need to rebuild the partnership between Democrats and Republicans, the trust between doctors and patients.

With new leadership in the White House and vaccines on the horizon, there is hope for healing in 2021.