Nurses do need flu shots

Six nurses and two other employees were recently fired by IU Health Goshen Hospital for refusing the mandatory flu vaccine.

Raised by medical professionals and sound reasoning, I am of the opinion that anyone who refers to a flu immunization as a “toxin” is not fit to administer medication and oversee the health of other people. Particularly in a building where people’s immune systems are already weakened by disease and a state where flu activity level is considered high, the flu shot’s necessity is not a matter of employee rights, but patient safety.

I am chiefly irked by the national attention that has generated around Ethel Hoover, 61, whose citation of religious reasoning did not meet Equal Employment Opportunity guidelines. Her lawyer argues that “flu shots are bad” is a strong enough legal case to back her job’s protection under the First Amendment.

I would counter that a nurse who subjects her patients to influenza by refusing the preventive shot has not been performing her job, especially given that the Influenza Patient Safety Program is a condition of employment.

As a requirement, I don’t feel there are any non-medical justifications for refusing the immunization. Just as a fear of needles can be thwarted by nasal spray or opting out of work when infected is not defensible (flu victims are contagious before signs of symptoms), I don’t think personally held beliefs should be viable reasoning either.

In the United States, nurses are required to take the licensing board only once, and states decide the maximum hours of education necessary afterward. In Indiana, the quota is 30 hours, and the topic is elective. For example, should a nurse such as Hoover forgo additional research of vaccines and communicable diseases, her knowledge of them would only reflect that of the period in which she studied.

Perhaps this is how the myth that the flu can be contracted from a flu vaccine continues to be perpetuated. Ignorance is not always bliss.

Hoover’s assertions attest as much. She wore all black on her last day of work as a sign of mourning for what would have been a 22-year career in February.

I prefer to think of the color signifying the beginning of the end for such outdated thinking and witless endangerment of patients. The hospital is carrying out no such “injustice” and only taking necessary safety precautions for those under its care.

Hoover told ABCNews.com, “For 21 years, I have religiously not taken the flu vaccine, and now you’re telling me that I believe in it.”

I’m telling Hoover that as a medical professional, particularly a nurse in the critical care unit, she damn well should.

­— ashhendr@indiana.edu