A disagreement with Interior Health (IH) has left one man out of a job. Arnold Hoekstra, a former nurse’s aid at Boundary Regional Hospital, told the Gazette he was fired after refusing to get the flu shot or to wear a protective mask during work.“The mandate started at the beginning of September,” he said. “They said, ‘have you taken your flu shot?’ I said, ‘no.’ They said, ‘Then you have to wear the mask.’ I said, ‘I choose not to wear a mask.’ I went through various disciplinarian meetings and then was fired at the end of December.”Hoekstra, who worked at the hospital for five years, said that every Interior Health employee working with patient care has to either get the flu shot or wear a mask.“It gets really silly, because there are certain areas where they can’t even do teaching because patients may go into those areas,” he said. Hoekstra said he refused to get the flu shot because he said the entire policy was based on a lie.“It had nothing to do with the safety of the patients or their health – it had everything to do with pushing drugs,” he said. “There trying to mandate my health.”Hoekstra said that drug companies benefit by having more people take the flu shots. “They don’t give away drugs for free,” he said. “Someone’s making money.”Hoekstra believes that extraneous drugs like the flu shot only causes more problems in people.“If you have a health immune system, which you should be building up, you shouldn’t be getting all these things,” he said. “All immunizations, like flu shots, are poisoning people. It’s creating a lot of disease, cancer, numerous ailments, autism, I believe, Lupus, all these things people are getting are caused by the flu shot.”Hoekstra said if IH would show him how the flu shot is building up his immune system to fight whatever’s out there, he would gladly acquiesce.“If it’s false, why should I adhere to any of that policy because it’s based on a lie,” he said.Hoekstra says he was told by IH after he was fired that he was “insubordinate”.“It’s the first time I’d heard that word,” he said. “I’ve never been insubordinate. I’ve always gone beyond. I’ve never said, ‘while that’s not in my job description, I can’t do it.’ But to me that was against my conscience.”A representative from IH told the Gazette that the company does not discuss individual cases but was willing to talk about the flu shot policy.John Bevanda, corporate director of labour and employee relations for Interior Health, said the policy was approved by the senior executive team in August of 2012.“It came from the medical health doctors provincially who had concerns about flu vaccination levels and the risks of patients essentially catching the flu,” he said. Bevanda said the flu shot mandate was not enforced the first season (2012-13).“It was more to take the opportunity to provide education to staff around the policy and why we were doing what we were doing,” he said. Bevanda said the policy was grieved by the provincial union and ended up going to arbitration.“The arbitrator did dismiss the union’s grievance and determined that it was a lawful exercise of employer management rights,” he said.  The decision was made during this flu season to enforce the flu shot policy, said Bevanda. “The policy is really one of choice. Employees can choose the flu shot. If they choose not to they are required to wear a mask.”Bevanda said there have been a lot of misconceptions about IH forcing workers to take the flu shot.“The policy is one of choice,” he said. “You either take the flu shot or not. If you decide not to you simply need to wear a surgical mask in the facility.”Bevanda said that out of 19,000 employees, IH has had less than a handful of issues.   “Out of those handful of people that were potentially in a situation of non-compliance at one time, through education and speaking with them the issues have been resolved in every case except for one,” he said. Bevanda added that 80 per cent of the staff took the flu shots and the remainder are wearing masks.“This policy, like any other policy, when we go to enforce it, it’s done on a case by case basis,” he said. “Typically, the manager would meet with the individual, usually with the union representative there. The manager would really investigate and find out what the facts are. When you’re applying a policy, your goal is to get employees to comply. Typically, if there’s not compliance we wouldn’t start off with termination. We would apply progressive discipline.”Bevanda said that would entail likely starting with a verbal warning, followed by a letter, leading up to one or two suspensions before termination.“It would be the end stage, not where we would start off with,” he said.Interior Health Influenza Control ProgramBACKGROUND Influenza can be a serious contagious disease spread by droplet transmission through close contact with an infected individual. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, nationally there are between 2000 and 8000 deaths per year from influenza and its complications. Infected individuals are highly contagious and can transmit influenza for 24 hours before they are symptomatic. Among vaccine-preventable diseases, influenza causes by far the most deaths, outpacing all other vaccine preventable diseases combined. Hospitalized patients are frequently more vulnerable to influenza than members of the general population. Influenza in vulnerable groups especially the elderly, the very young and the immunosuppressed, is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. It is a major contributor to hospitalizations in winter. Healthcare workers have been implicated as the source of influenza in healthcare settings. Vaccination of healthcare workers will reduce their risk of getting influenza and spreading it to patients. The most effective strategy for preventing influenza is annual vaccination. Influenza vaccine is safe and effective. The wearing of masks can serve as a method of source control of infected healthcare workers who may have had no symptoms. Masks may also protect unvaccinated healthcare workers from as yet unrecognized infected patients or visitors with influenza. Other infection control measures such as rapid identification of ill patients, hand hygiene, cough etiquette, restrictions on work and visiting, and the use of anti-viral medications all help but vaccination remains the cornerstone of efforts to control influenza transmission.

Grand Forks Gazette