Vaccine Mandates Drive Some U.S. Nurses to Exit When Needed Most

Mandate the vaccine, and some of your nurses will quit. Don’t mandate the vaccine, and some of your nurses will get Covid—rendering them unable to work, or even landing them in the very intensive care unit where they normally work. For a hospital administrator who’s been dealing with nursing shortages escalating throughout the pandemic, this is the dilemma.

“It’s a cynical question, but what gets us to losing the higher amount of staff?” says Alan Levine, chief executive officer of Ballad Health, which has 21 hospitals and other centers serving patients in Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. He ...