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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now calling for any doctors listening right now about how you're reaching out to patients in your practice to recommend COVID vaccines, even if they're not asking, 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280. We ask it this way, even if they’re not asking, because in President Biden’s speech last week, announcing new vaccine mandates, he included a call for help to the nation's family physicians, pediatricians, and general practitioners. Here's what he said.

President Biden: "You're the most trusted medical voice to your patients. You may be the one person who can get someone to change their mind about being vaccinated. Tonight, I'm asking each of you to reach out to your unvaccinated patients over the next two weeks and make a personal appeal to them to get the shot. America needs your personal involvement in this critical effort."

Brian Lehrer: President Biden last week. We want to invite right now any family physicians, pediatricians, GPs of any kind, have you or do you plan to heed the President's call? 646-435-7280. He said do it in the next two weeks. Has that got you thinking about doing something with respect to some patients in your practice that you haven't been doing before being more proactive, have you, will you in response to the President's call, or have you already reached out to your unvaccinated patients, and what are those conversations like? 646-435-7280. Doctors, will you share some of your thinking or share some of your experiences? This will help everybody else to hear it from your mouth, 646-435-7280.

How do you see your role in the American project of combating vaccine misinformation? Is it a more central role for you than you at first thought it would be? Did you not expect to confront as many doubts from patients as you currently do? Do your patients trust you when you tell them to get the shot? Do you feel like a trusted resource, and how have you used that trust to rise to this very unique and very specific crisis and occasion? 646-435-7280.

Doctors, call us and tell us if you've already been doing that, or if you plan to heed President Biden's call to reach out proactively to unvaccinated patients who may not be asking you themselves. We'll take your calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and now they're calling for any doctors listening right now about how you're reaching out to patients in your practice to recommend COVID vaccines even if they're not asking, as President Biden is now asking doctors to do. Michael in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in, Michael. Hello, doctor.

Michael: Hello, how are you doing, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: Good. How are you doing this? Are you doing this?

Michael: I am doing it. I am a specialist, not a primary care doctor. I practice in a city hospital doing pain medicine. Every one of my patients that come in, I simply say to them, "Where are you on the COVID vaccine trajectory? Where are you at with the COVID vaccine?" Vast majority of them say that they are vaccinated or fully vaccinated, but I do have a number of patients who I've talked to and they said, "Oh, they don't trust it, or they don't want it or they're waiting." "What are you waiting for, what do you need to hear?"

I let them know that our hospital has a walk-in appointment available, a walk-in clinic, and I've had at least a couple of dozen people that have committed to getting the vaccine over the last several months. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Is there a particular argument that you've used or a particular fear or a piece of misinformation that you've most commonly had to address?

Michael: What I see most often is not an overt anti-vaccination political thing but in the city what I'm seeing is just a distrust of doctors and medicine in general or a, "I want to see what's happening," or I also have a number of patients with a comorbid mental illness, who I can't convince them. There's a lot of different things, but, depending on what they tell me, I come back with facts.

I also really let a lot of my patients who have a lot of medical issues know, "Hey, with your diabetes or with your obesity or with your hypertension, you are at much higher risk of having serious disease." I tell them honestly, that I've seen people like you die and I don't want to see that happen to you.

Brian Lehrer: Michael, thank you so much for your work. Thank you for checking in with us. Amanda in Sparta, Doctor, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Amanda: Hi, Brian. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you fine. What kind of a doctor are you, and did you hear the President’s call the other day?

Amanda: Yes, I did. I'm a gynecologist. I do GYN in my private practice. Yes, I did hear the call. I see women of all ages. This is a very common misconception that there is an issue with fertility and the COVID vaccination that I oftentimes find I have to provide factual information about the reality that there's no evidence of infertility from the vaccine. I ask every patient, we have just a questionnaire that patients fill out. I ask every patient and those who are not vaccinated, I ask them if there's any information that I can give them, and I do highly recommend them.

Brian Lehrer: For women of childbearing age, who say, "How do I know it's not going to affect my future babies with birth defects or whatever or affect my own fertility because the vaccine is so new?" How do you answer them?

Amanda: I try to inform them about how a vaccine works. That it is very directed just to the immune system and to one particular area of the immune system. That there is no vaccine that we give to date that has any issues with fertility. There's no evidence in the last year and a half of any problems with fertility from anyone who's gotten the vaccine. I try to address it with some basic science and also with just the evidence from people who've been vaccinated to date.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, by now there’re plenty of vaccine pregnancies and vaccine babies, meaning babies born to vaccinated people, right?

Amanda: Correct. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Amanda. Thank you, Doctor, thank you for calling in. We're taking calls from doctors on how you're reaching out proactively to unvaccinated patients to try to get them to get their shots, 646-435-7280. Now that President Biden has asked family doctors and other providers to do that.

Andrew in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Andrew.

Andrew: Hi, good morning, Brian. Thank you for taking the call. I love your show. I am a family practice physician by training. I live in New York City, practice in the Bronx and Westchester. I'm currently in urgent care, and also I work in hospital medicine. I've been on the COVID frontline since day one. I've been in the last-- what is it? Like six months since the vaccines have been available, I guess more like 9, 10 months.

I do the PCR tests in the offices, and I always strike up conversation with my patients and ask them whether or not they're vaccinated. Early on, I would ask, and when many of them would say "No," I would sternly just ask them, "Why not?"

I would have begun to get complaints and bad reviews. I work in a large urgent care where we get these basically patient satisfaction surveys. In the last few months, I've switched my approach. My surveys have gotten better. I'm not sure that more of the patients are getting vaccinated because I don't see people for follow-up. What I ask people is, "What about the common good? I understand that you're hesitant", and I tell them actually, I was hesitant. I actually suffer from a number of severe allergies, and I had an allergic reaction, and I did it anyway.

I ask my patients-- we get into the conversation, and I just leave them with this important American quote which is "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." I think we're so far removed from doing things as a collective. Unfortunately, I don't feel positive about it, I don't think I'm moving that many people. Sometimes I just think like I should just keep my mouth shut.

Brian Lehrer: Andrew, thank you for that story and even for the-- what should I say? Tempered optimism in that story, but interesting that you evolved your approach over time from what you call stern to appealing to the common good and people's interest in protecting their fellow human beings. Thank you for that story.

Felice in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hello, Doctor.

Felice: Hi, are you talking to me?

Brian Lehrer: I am.

Felice: Oh, great. I am a general internist. Also, just so you know, Brian, GPS are really not a thing anymore. General internists are board-certified in internal medicine. I have a very long patient panel for 15 or more years. I've done two things with them, one is I've addressed their misunderstanding that the vaccines doesn't actually protect you, because they've heard that people who get the vaccine get COVID anyway.

I draw a picture of the virus, and then I draw two arrows. One arrow is with a vaccine, and I draw a little face, and I have a little nose with some drops coming out of it, and I say, with the vaccine, you feel like you have a cold.

The other arrow is without the vaccine, and I draw a picture of a patient in a bed connected to a ventilator, and that's without the vaccine. That's one thing I've done. The second thing, which I think probably works even more is I've said, "I've taken care of you for a really long time, you know how much I care about you and your health and I've tried my best over the years to keep you healthy, adjusting your medicines and doing the right tests. Nothing I have ever done for you over all these years could be as impactful as if I can convince you to get the vaccine, because if I can convince you to get the vaccine, I can save your life."

Brian Lehrer: While the last caller went from being stern to appealing to people's sense of community, it sounds like you're appealing to fear on the one hand, and also to their trust in you from your prior relationships.

Felice: Yes, because the other caller talked about the mistrust and that is totally there. I'm trying to counter that mistrust of the system with their trust in me.

Brian Lehrer: It strikes me and we're going to run out of time in the segment in 30 seconds so you're going to be our last call, but it strikes me that it reinforces the importance of having a primary care physician who you have an actual relationship with and having a health care system that provides a structure for that no matter what your income or anything else, because that's where the trust comes from. It comes from the ongoing relationship. Do you agree?

Felice: Absolutely, 100%.

Brian Lehrer: Felice, thank you very much. Thank you for your service doctors who called in. Thank you all very much for sharing your stories. Very interesting to see President Biden appealing to doctors to, over the next two weeks, reach out proactively to patients in their practices who are unvaccinated and try to convince them. We'll see how much impact it has. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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