When Gov. Phil Murphy mandated last week that employees at hospitals and other state and private healthcare facilities must get the COVID-19 vaccine, dentists were conspicuously absent from the list, as were other types of providers. As dean of the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine, I’m troubled. For dentists, vaccines are even more imperative, given how close we are to patients who must open their mouths for treatment. But it shouldn’t take a state order for any healthcare worker to get the vaccine. They should have been vaccinated months ago. For a patient to contract a life-threatening illness from the very people entrusted to safeguard their health — an infection that could have been prevented by a vaccine — is not only a cruel irony but a gross violation of professional ethics. For frontline healthcare workers, I believe it is a form of malpractice. To read the full story.