Some healthcare workers say that patients and their families are demanding unproven treatments, and that they are getting threats.
People act as if they can come into the hospital and request any therapy they want or decline any therapy that they want with the idea being that somehow they can pick and choose and direct their therapy and it doesn't work," said Dr. Jack Lyons, a physician at St. Cloud.
Patients and their families have come in to ask for ivermectin, which has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for COVID-19 treatment, according to a travel nurse who has worked in hospitals along the East Coast.
Many times patients who are admitted to the hospital that have not chosen to become vaccine-free decide that the information that they have received can be utilized in the same space as a research-based facility and unfortunately, a lot of times that is the case.
Hospitals normally have their own research protocols for medication, and medical practitioners across several fields come together to decide a plan of care using "top-level" evidence.
"If things have not been proven to be effective, then we will not give it to them, because they can have more harm than good," she said.
A travel nurse who spoke to Insider on the condition of anonymity said she had patients and their families threaten her for not using treatments that were not approved by the FDA.
The nurse told Insider that she has had patients accuse her of trying to kill them when they don't use the medication they want.
Patients tend to understand where healthcare workers are coming from once she explains the misinformation.
There's a lot of misinformation about the benefits of some of these medications. It's very confusing for people to navigate.
Lyons told CNN that the families of patients have been hurt by the hospital's decision not to use these therapies.
He said that a patient's family sent a threat to the hospital that said people were coming for them.
At a time when cases and hospitalizations across the US are on the rise, healthcare workers are bracing for more strain on the hospital system during the holidays.
Insider previously reported that healthcare workers are overwhelmed. For some, seeing people die for the past two years has been overwhelming and they don't see a light at the end of the tunnel.
One described it as a movie.
It's difficult because there's still a lot of misconception among our patient population. It's difficult to explain to patients who were unvaccinated that they won't be able to feel relief immediately, and they may need more serious interventions before they get better.
