Department of Bioethics, United States National Institutes of Health, 10 Center Drive, Building 10, Room 1C118, Bethesda, MD, 20892-1156, USA.
Department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA.
J Public Health Policy. 2022 Jun;43(2):311-319. doi: 10.1057/s41271-022-00347-9. Epub 2022 Mar 30.
The coronavirus pandemic continues to hinder the ability of businesses to operate at full capacity. Vaccination offers a path for employees to return to work, and for businesses to resume full capacity, while protecting themselves, their fellow workers, and customers. Many employers reluctant to mandate vaccination for their employees are considering other ways to increase employee vaccination rates. Because much has been written about the ethics of vaccine mandates, we examine a related and less discussed topic: the ethics of encouragement strategies aimed at overcoming vaccine reluctance (which can be due to resistance, hesitance, misinformation, or inertia) to facilitate voluntary employee vaccination. While employment-based vaccine encouragement may raise privacy and autonomy concerns, and though some employers might hesitate to encourage employees to get vaccinated, our analysis suggests ethically acceptable ways to inform, encourage, strongly encourage, incentivize, and even subtly pressure employees to get vaccinated.
冠状病毒大流行继续阻碍企业满负荷运转的能力。接种疫苗为员工重返工作岗位以及企业恢复满负荷运转提供了一条途径，同时保护了他们自己、同事和客户。许多不愿强制要求员工接种疫苗的雇主正在考虑其他方法来提高员工的疫苗接种率。由于已经有很多关于疫苗强制接种的伦理问题的讨论，我们来探讨一个相关但讨论较少的话题：克服对疫苗的抵触情绪（这种抵触可能是由于抵制、犹豫、错误信息或惯性）以促进员工自愿接种疫苗的鼓励策略的伦理问题。虽然基于就业的疫苗鼓励可能会引起隐私和自主权方面的担忧，而且一些雇主可能会犹豫是否鼓励员工接种疫苗，但我们的分析表明，有一些在伦理上可以接受的方法来告知、鼓励、强烈鼓励、激励，甚至微妙地向员工施加压力，促使他们接种疫苗。
