Quebec’s definitive decline in forcing healthcare personnel to be vaccinated is dividing employees and players in the health network.
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” I’m a bit disappointed. I expected that we will ensure the good health of the population ”, reacts Manon Pilon, a physiotherapist at the Jean-Talon Hospital, in Montreal, crossed by The newspaper.
Doubly vaccinated, the latter finds it “incomprehensible” that employees still refuse the vaccine.
She would have liked the government to find a way to meet its obligation, although she was well aware of the issue of the staff shortage.
Crossed a few minutes earlier, Najla Salmi, who is a sterilization attendant at the same hospital, thinks for her part that this is good news.
“For me, it’s ‘everyone has their right’. There must be respect, ”says the employee who has been adequately vaccinated, but who nevertheless expresses doubts about the effectiveness of the vaccines.
Among doctors, the news is also received in a mixed way.
“We were going into the wall, the belt loose, no airbag. While there, we are going to hit the wall, but less quickly ”, illustrates the Dr Benoit Heppell, head of the general medicine department of the CIUSSS de l’Estrie-CHUS.
For his part, the intensivist and pulmonologist Yannick Poulin speaks of an “unacceptable” and “incomprehensible” decision.
Disappointed experts
“We will have workers who will be potential vectors of COVID in health establishments, where we must ensure optimal safety of care”, deplores Roxane Borgès Da Silva, professor in management, evaluation and health policies at the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal
For her, the solution of the three government screening tests has loopholes, because an employee could be declared negative just before starting his period of “hypercontagiosity” on his workplace.
“We failed to convince unvaccinated health workers, so [le ministre Christian Dubé] is looking for a way out, ”argues epidemiologist Nimâ Machouf, who affirms that she herself refuses to be treated by unvaccinated caregivers.
A lesser evil, says the FIQ
For the Interprofessional Health Federation of Quebec (FIQ), which represents the vast majority of nurses and respiratory therapists in Quebec, this decline is a “lesser evil” to avoid disruption of services.
– With Mélissa Fauteux and Vincent Larin, Agence QMI