Nurse speaks out after being fired for refusing vaccination

Ethel Hoover opened up her mailbox to an unpleasant surprise last month: a termination notice.

Hoover’s 22-year career as a nurse for IU Health Goshen Hospital came to an end with the refusal to get a flu shot.

She was among eight employees fired at Goshen Hospital in December for refusing to get the vaccination.

“I’m not opposed to all vaccines, but I’m opposed to the flu vaccine,” Hoover said.

“They’re telling me I believe it and I have to take it. I’m telling them, ‘No, you can’t tell me what to put in my body.’”

Hoover said she has taken the vaccine in the past and subsequently experienced negative side effects.

IU Health developed a system-wide Influenza Patient Safety Program based on recommendations from health authorities including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association.

“I believe that, first off, there is no study to prove that the flu vaccine is effective,”
Hoover said. “Maybe a 60, 70, 80-percent chance it’s effective.”

Herd immunity theory suggests when a whole community is vaccinated, the community becomes immune to the disease with the addition of the number of individuals that become vaccinated.

“If you watch, listen, hear the news they are going to say this is the worst flu epidemic in years,” Hoover said. “If that is a theory, it’s incorrect. More people are becoming immunized, yet it’s worst one that we’ve had yet.”

Amanda Roach, media relations coordinator for IU Health Bloomington Hospital, said in an email that IU Health’s top priority is the health and well-being of its patients.

IU Health adheres to the recommendations of the CDC.

“IU Health employees who held concerns — be they medical, religious or other — were given the opportunity to apply for exemption,” Roach said. “Each request for
exemption was taken seriously and considered by a panel of experts composed of physicians, infection control specialists, chaplains, ethicists and human resources and legal experts.”

Hoover said she went through three sets of appeals for an exemption, all of which were denied.

Hoover said other employees at Goshen Hospital were granted an exemption.

“Some people did get a religious exemption,” Hoover said. “Some of it was not any different than any reason than we stated.”

Hoover said people in waiting rooms pose the same risk as a health care worker without the vaccine.

“If we ask you, as a patient, you still have the right to refuse it,” Hoover said. “As a health care employee, you can’t negate. How am I going to expose a patient any more than a visitor that’s sick?”

Roach said IU Health communicated details regarding its annual flu vaccination policy to employees beginning in September 2012, through to the participation deadline of
December 2012.

“More than 95 percent of IU Health employees have complied with the policy,” Roach said.

Elaine Cox, director of infection prevention at Riley Hospital for Children, an IU Health hospital, said the flu shot is beneficial to health care workers because they are exposed to many people during the flu season.

“If you go patient to patient, you can be the vector of which the flu is spread,” Cox said. “We get them the flu shot so they won’t unwillingly spread it to patients.”

Cox said symptoms of the flu are usually not noticed until three to five days of exposure, and she said she suggests college students get vaccinated.

“We have such a better focus on patient safety and ... stopping all the ways that infections can be spread in the hospital has been such a focus of our resources,” Cox said. “It just naturally follows that the flu would be one of the things we try to prevent in this era of patient safety.”

For Hoover, she said she hasn’t decided what comes next.

“Through all this, we are hoping and praying that a good thing will come out of it, (and) that they can’t make flu vaccines mandatory,” Hoover said. “If they can do this, next it will be the public, the school children and everyone.”