United States

Health System Fires 50 for Refusing to Get Flu Shots

It’s part of a growing trend for hospitals to require flu shots for workers

About 50 employees of Essentia Health, an upper-Midwest hospital chain, didn’t go to work Wednesday.

But it wasn’t an early start to the Thanksgiving holiday for them. They were fired for refusing to get flu shots, NBC News reported.

It’s part of a growing trend for hospitals to require flu shots for workers.  

“It’s a patient safety issue,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University and a spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “It’s so that we do not give flu to our patients.”

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