Doctors Reluctant to Treat Unvaccinated Children, Study Shows

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-20/doctors-reluctant-to-treat-unvaccinated-children-study-shows.html

More than one fifth of pediatricians stopped treating children whose parents refused to have them vaccinated, according to an online survey of doctors in nine U.S. states.

Such denials run counter to recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and should prompt a discussion about how doctors handle the issue, authors of the survey said in a presentation to the 49th Annual Meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in Boston.

“Pediatricians are starting to recognize that having unimmunized patients in their practice puts other patients at risk when they congregate in the waiting room,” said Christopher Harrison, director of the infectious disease research laboratory at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City, Missouri, in a telephone interview. “They’re conflicted and the data shows this.”

The vaccines parents most frequently refused or delayed were MMR shots against measles, mumps and rubella given to children about age 1; the HPV or human papilloma vaccine given to adolescent girls to prevent cervical cancer; and influenza shots given to children of all ages, according to an online survey of 909 pediatricians in nine states in the U.S. Midwest.

[HockeyMom]

1. Two waiting rooms

Many years ago, my kids doctor had two waiting room; one for well and the other for sick patients.

[shraby]

2. Mine had a side door to a treatment room that went in

from the outside. That way they could be treated individually and not have to go to the waiting room at all.