Nurses fired for refusing flu vaccine

Nurses COVID

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While I personally do not like the flu shot either.... I have been required to get a Hep B vaccine, MMR all current, etc etc .... so not sure how this is so different?

http://news.yahoo.com/nurses-fired-refusing-flu-shot-224637902--abc-news-health.html

Specializes in Trauma.
Did any one read this part of the article? So 3 veteran nurses out of 8. Why only these eight? The one nurse in the story had spent 22years there.

"The hospital said in a statement that it implemented the mandate to promote patient safety based on recommendations from the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It announced the mandate in September. Of the hospital's 26,000 employees statewide, 95 percent complied. That means 1,300 employees did not comply, but only eight were fired."

An Indiana hospital has fired eight employees, including at least three veteran nurses, after they refused mandatory flu shots, stirring up controversy over which should come first: employee rights or patient safety. The hospital imposed mandatory vaccines, responding to rising concerns about the spread of influenza.

Ethel Hoover wore all black on her last day of work as a nurse in the critical care unit at Indiana University Health Goshen Hospital. She said she was in "mourning" because she would have been at the hospital 22 years in February, and she's only called out of work four or five times in her whole career , she said.

Since the article did not say this is only speculation... Perhaps the other employees did not have direct patient contact. Maybe management, accountants, maintenance, and such.

As always, follow the money....................

Okay, I'll bite.

Why?

Read the post directly before yours. The flu shots that I have adm. have ALL been multidose vials.....

Sorry, mercury is old, old, OLD news. Hasn't been used in vaccines for more than a decade, although you'd never know it to read the antivaccine blogs.

As for the rest, vaccines come in single-dose vials and do not contain preservatives. If you are concerned, ask to watch yours being drawn up.

Specializes in ER trauma, ICU - trauma, neuro surgical.

I've never gotten the flu and I've refused it every year, which is going to change next year when it becomes mandatory. It drives crazy that I am so contagious, yet no one cares about the 40 aunts, uncles, grandmothers, grandfathers, neighbors, friends, co-workers, cousins, and kids who cough, sneeze, touch, and wipe all over the patient. Same people who refuse to wear gown, gloves, and mask, who never wash their hands, or sometimes actually wear PPEs, but walk outside the room, use their cellphone, and remove their gloves when no one is looking. If hospitals really wanted to reduce to transmission rate of the flu, limit all hospital visitors to those who have been vaccinated. I bet the rate would be close to zero, but that is a crazy standard and we can't deny people the right to see their loved ones. I wash my hands all day, use hand sanitizer, usually always wear gloves, and obviously never cough on people....I know that doesn't guarantee anything but compared to the visitors that have snot everywhere, I doubt something is coming from me. I had a patient last week that had visitors every 10 minutes, 3 at a time, never the same people for 12 hrs straight. On top of every person asking "how they doing, how they doing, they doing," I couldn't get people to wash their hands, cover their mouth, or stop people from lifting their kids for hugs and kisses in enough time. I often wonder in a non-realistic scenario, how dirty hospitals would be with flu and mrsa if it was limited to just patients, hospital workers, and immediate family only....if each visitor was screened for flu-like symptoms, cough, or open wounds...if the hospital was treated like the OR with limited visiting areas and masks. I think the nurses that are arguing against flu shots see other major factors. Plus, if nurses actually have the flu, they are restricted from work. I have seen quite a few people who got vaccinated, but still got a different strain of the flu. On the other hand, the nurses that are arguing for getting vaccines, we are being exposed to those visitors which can then be transmitted to the patient, so there are both sides to argue. Personally, I think vaccination is being implemented because of all the visitors that are bringing it in. So, the only thing left to do is cut out our part of the link. Mandatory vaccination will never go away because the flu is coming in via a whole other route and that route is never going to be limited or restricted. How dare I tell the guy that is a distant cousin, who doesn't even know the pt's last name, to not come in because he has a cough...who never washes his hands, who constantly wipes his nose, touches his face, and wipes the snot off his kid nose, and then insists I give him a wet hand towel so he can wipe all over the pt's face with his own wet hands. Pts who are immunocompromised have strict limitation, such as limited visitors, so why can't that be the same for all pts? Don't they deserve that? In the end, I will get vaccinated. I don't have a choice. But, I love my job, I like what I do, and I don't want to put patient's lives at risk, so I will do it. But I don't think it does anything toward the problem and I'd rather not put something in my body that might not even work, but it's not about me. I'd rather work in a hospital and get vaccinated verses sitting at a desk with shirt and tie, crunching numbers 5 days a week for the next 40 years. It would be nice if visitors would at least wash their hands or god forbid, stop coughing and touching the pts face every 5 minutes.

This will go before the Supreme Court before it's all said and done.

The employers WILL lose.

There are too many rights being violated by mandatory vaccine policies.

And this whole "it's not about me" stuff? Hogwash! It is about you. It's about personal choice, freedom, and the right to not be injected with a man-made material that doesn't even work! You want to stay healthy? Wash your darn hands..... I can't tell you how many nurses, aides, and doctors I work with that DON'T.

http://gaia-health.com/gaia-blog/2012-10-05/no-value-in-any-influenza-vaccine-cochrane-collaboration-study/

This debate seems to frequently come up. Yes, everyone has the freedom to decide whether or not they want to get the Flu vaccine. The hospitals also have the right to try to limit known exposure possibilities. They can not mandate what the patients or their families do. But there are choices that everyone has to make in life. The hospital chooses to enforce Flu vaccinations and employees have the choice to work for those hospitals or not. While the choices that hospital employees have may not be the ones that they want. We do not always have wonderful options for the choices we make. Sometimes, it is having a job or not having a job.

And for visitors that refuse to gown up or wear protective gear. There are are hospitals (not all) that require visitors to follow contact precautions, if they do not then they told to either follow precautions or leave. Yes, it ticks them off (at first) but once it was explained to them that their loved one was contagious and that the protection goes both ways. It protects them from what the patient has and prevents them from possibly exposing their loved one to other germs that they will have a hard time fighting off. Usually, they are much more accepting of the precautions. I do wish that all hospitals would make requirements of the visitors.

Insane! There is not one study that proves that the flu shot is effective - yet they demand that staff be injected to mercury. They just think it might work. Pretty sad that these people deciding on who gets to keep a job are stupid! This world is screwed up. http://news.yahoo.com/nurses-fired-refusing-flu-shot-224637902--abc-news-health.html

I wonder why they denied her religious exemption.

Nevertheless I get my flu shot cause I want a job.

Understandable bur very sad, very scary. I do the same thing. I also carry resentment against those forcing me and against myself for knuckling under.

Where ever will we find the strength, the stamina to not take the mark of the beast?

Specializes in Emergency & Trauma/Adult ICU.
What it is basically is saying that hospitals have to report to CMS their percentage of hcw influenza vaccinations. That started in 2012. this year.

If they do not meet the percentage of vaccinations that CMS wants then they can be penalized by a reduction in amount that Medicare reimburses the hospital. Up to 2%. Two percent at the local community hospital equals to approx 30-40 million dollars per year.

If people want to believe that hospitals suddenly developed an interest in protecting their patients from influenza. Think again.

This kind of reminds me how some Nurses thought that hospitals made themselves a no smoking facility in the interest of the patient's health. REALLY???

Thank you olddragger -- I kept reading post after post, incredulous that no one seemed aware of the CMS requirement.

Getting up on my soapbox now ...

Nurses -- look -- there is no way you can work in healthcare without being aware that it is a highly governmentally-regulated industry. So wouldn't it make sense to gain some knowledge, as a professional employed in the field, about the political forces affecting your industry? When you vent about "my hospital is doing this" or "my employer is doing that" do you ever ask for clarification? Do you understand which corporate decisions affecting patient care, facility administration, or employment policies are regulatory mandates ... or do you really believe that your hospital unilaterally thought these things up due to lack of anything better to do? Do you educate yourself about what role YOUR elected officials may be playing in votes affecting HHS / CMS regulations?

Eligibility | Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Here's a link to some reading for you. Yes, it's dense, dry, and about as exciting as watching grass grow. But YOU are PAYING YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS to make decisions to form regulatory agencies, committees and task forces to do this stuff. if you think they should be doing something else with their time ... make your voice heard by YOUR representatives, and vote accordingly. And perhaps reconsider in a different light some policies made by your employer(s).

Insane! There is not one study that proves that the flu shot is effective - yet they demand that staff be injected to mercury. They just think it might work. Pretty sad that these people deciding on who gets to keep a job are stupid! This world is screwed up. Nurses Fired for Refusing Flu Shot - Yahoo! News

What are YOU going to do about it, remryreid?

This debate seems to frequently come up. Yes, everyone has the freedom to decide whether or not they want to get the Flu vaccine. The hospitals also have the right to try to limit known exposure possibilities. They can not mandate what the patients or their families do.

Well, why the heck not? They could, if they had the B____s, mandate that no one could visit if unvax'ed and that no pts could be admitted/treated if not vax'ed if it's really that all-fired important., The real issue is that hospitals don't lose money by insisting that these groups get vax'ed.

Kooky Korky- It would be great if everyone got vaccinated. Currently, our officials have not made it mandatory like they have other vaccinations. Yes, I know that hospitals do have financial incentives to get a certain percentage of employees vaccinated. Like it or not, it is still a choice that we have to make. Just because we do not like the options, makes it no less a choice.

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