If as health care workers, we have an ethical obligation to do all we can to protect our patients from harm, should we then be obligated to receive the H1N1 vaccine? Consider all the patients we come in contact with in our offices who have respiratory infections. Isn’t it important for us as providers to take even the simplest of precautions such as washing our hands, before we see our next patients, to minimize the chance of infection? Why shouldn’t we then be mandated to receive a vaccine that will help prevent us from getting infected and thus transmitting it to others?

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