Strong words, I know, but nurses and other employees scored a major victory in Alaska. Providence Alaska Medical Center rescinded its policy that every employee receive a flu shot as a condition of employment, right before the deadline to do so.

From Anchorage Daily News:

Providence Alaska Medical Center on Thursday rescinded its policy that every employee receive a flu shot as a condition of employment.

The flu shot requirement “was the right decision for the safety of our patients and community,” said hospital administrator Bruce Lamoureux in a press release. “We do acknowledge, however, the strong feelings that the requirement and its swift implementation elicited in some employees.”
The move brings to a close a controversial month for the state’s largest hospital, which employs 3,100 people. Some employees supported the preventative measure while others balked, calling it a violation of their rights.

Interestingly enough, healthcare workers are some of the people least likely to get flu shots. Surely, if flu shots were so effective, and if hospital patients were really dropping like flies–due to catching the flu from their nurse or respiratory therapist–health care workers would be more compliant, n’est-ce pas?

In reality, about 60% of doctors and nurses refuse to get flu shots. I think this policy that Providence Hospital tried to enforce merely has to do with trying to cut down absenteeism in its workforce and has nothing to do with patient health and safety. I’ve yet to see any real data that large numbers of hospitalized patients are contracting the flu during their stay, and that the transmission is coming from healthcare workers.

Research anyone? Stats? Any real information and numbers, other than the CDC’s dreary “36,000 people die of the flu every year and 200,000 are hospitalized with it?” The CDC has not released any real numbers on death rates and certainly, nothing on the supposed connection between unvaccinated healthcare workers and passing the flu to unsuspecting patients. As any nurse knows, you are more likely to contract something from the patient, than the other way around.

I thought I had already blogged on the Alaska situation, when they first passed the mandate, but I guess not. FYI, physicians were not included in this ruling. I guess its okay for them to carry the germs, but not nurses. My guess is that the hospital rescinded because of the grievance filed by the Alaska Nurses Association, and also fear of lawsuits. They would have no way of defending their ruling, in the absence of any real data or the fact that it didn’t extend to doctors. And if patients are really contracting the flu when hospitalized, then the most likely source of transmission are visitors.

This is from Newsminer.com, about the original ruling.