PrepTest 152, Section 4, Question 17
Health-care facilities have a duty to protect their(37 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(7 more words not shown)
- AHealth-care facility employees(10 more words not shown)
- BInfluenza viruses are(15 more words not shown)
- CMost patients in(7 more words not shown)
- DVoluntary vaccination policies(15 more words not shown)
- ESociety has already(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Protecting patients gives a health-care facility a reason to take influenza seriously. But why does that duty require this particular policy for every employee?
Vaccines can reduce the spread of influenza; let's accept that. We still need to connect mandatory employee vaccination with the protection patients need. What if employees with influenza stayed away from the facility, and that arrangement adequately protected the patients? I'm not claiming it would work. It is a way to ask whether the duty can be met without the proposed mandate.
What we’re looking for
The required assumption should help establish that the mandate is needed for patient protection. A policy being helpful doesn't automatically make it the only adequate way to fulfill the duty.
Working the answers
- A
Employees could regard the policy as a violation of their rights without that belief defeating the author's reasoning about protecting patients. This argument doesn't depend on every employee accepting the policy as legitimate. That doesn't settle all questions about employee rights; it identifies what this particular argument requires.
- B
Influenza needn't be the most harmful airborne disease for the facility to have a duty to address its substantial risk. Another pathogen could be worse, and influenza could still require preventive measures. The comparison with every other airborne threat isn't needed.
- C
The proportion of patients already vaccinated doesn't, by itself, settle whether employees need a mandate. Vaccinated patients might still face some risk, and a facility could have a duty to protect an unvaccinated minority. The argument doesn't require most patients to be unvaccinated.
- DCorrect
This identifies a specific alternative to the mandate: a voluntary vaccination policy. If that policy adequately protected patients, the duty to protect them wouldn't establish that vaccination must be mandatory. For example, employees might already volunteer in sufficient numbers to provide adequate protection. The author needs to rule out that adequate voluntary alternative. D does so without claiming no one would ever volunteer.
- E
A society's prior acceptance of similar mandates is different from whether this mandate is required by the duty to protect patients. The argument could recommend a new kind of requirement even without that precedent. E doesn't supply the missing necessity of the proposed policy.
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