Health-care workers could face fines of up to $100,000

[Mojorabbit]

and jail if they refuse to work.
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/CityandRegion/2006/03/01/1467449-sun.html

Pandemic bill raises alarm
By JOHN MINER, FREE PRESS HEALTH REPORTER


Sweeping new Ontario emergency legislation has health-care workers afraid they may be forced to choose between protecting their families and a jail sentence if a flu pandemic hits the province.

Bill 56 has raised alarms with doctors, nurses and other health-care workers because it contains a clause that gives the Ontario cabinet power to "authorize" any person reasonably qualified to provide services in a declared emergency.

The penalty for violating the proposed law is a fine of up to $100,000 and a year in jail for each day the order isn't obeyed.

"That's a big stick," said Goderich emergency department doctor Ken Milne.

Milne said yesterday doctors and other health-care workers want to care for people but shouldn't be forced to work if anti-viral drugs aren't available to them and their families.

"What happens when you come home at night and you have a tickle in your throat. Do you want to expose your wife, your kids to something because you have answered the call?

"It is one thing to lose your dad or your mother, it is another thing to bring it home and wipe out your family," he said.
snip

"I have already given the best years of my life training to become a physician and in providing care. Now that I have a family, do not ask me to sacrifice myself in a pandemic for which most medical treatments will be useless anyway, and in which health-care resources like respirators are likely to be overwhelmed," she wrote in an e-mail to The Free Press.

In introducing the legislation in December, Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Monte Kwinter said he wanted the bill passed by June.

Kwinter said the law will give the government the ability to say to people: "No, you can't leave. We need you to do this job.
################
Would you be the least bit surprised if the US passes something similar?
Yikes!

[Book Lover]

1. For what it's worth in today's environment

this is involuntary servitude.

[fishnfla]

2. Health care workers will be among the first ones dead anyway

they cant fine you when you're croaked

[ThomCat]

3. And there families too, if this goes through.

Passing a law like this means that the doctors and nurses are going to have to quarentine themselves from their families for the duration.

Do the hospitals have places for them to stay so they don't have to go home? Can they take care of that many people?

What about the people who have to go home because they have no one else to take care of their kids, parents, etc.? Will there be enough anti-viral drugs and medical facilities for all those heath-worker's families?

If this epidemic comes it's going to be a nightmare.

[anotherdrew]

15. what makes you think these providers will be going home? quarantine n/t

going home or anywhere else. if it looks like a pandemic of something not widely and effectivly treatable - in that senario we don't know what plans are in place.

[rainbow4321]

4. It may come to just that

More than once I have gotten in the mail a letter from our county's "Homeland Security" office. See, I am a nurse..and they were asking for me to give them my professional info, what I specialize in, all in case of a community emergency so they would know where I could help out if this disaster ever happens. Both times I threw the letter away. IF there ever is a local disaster, I will be at work and THEY know what I am capable of..I really don't feel a need for my nursing info to be filed w/ the Homeland Security office. You know the "local" office would be sending the collected nursing info to the federal level in a heartbeat.

Other thing: My city just did a "flu study" to see how hard the city would be hit in case of an outbreak. They figured out there are only around 700 hospital beds in the city. The study showed that 1,000's would need to be hospitalized, hundreds would die. What they left out: There may be 700+ beds, but who the hell is going to tend to the patients IN those beds if the local healthcare workers are sick or their families need them??

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/city/collin/stories/DN-birdflu27_cco.ART.North.Edition2.90b6812.html

A severe flu pandemic would hospitalize thousands of Plano residents and kill hundreds, according to city projections. But Plano's three hospitals have only 754 beds and a combined morgue capacity of 11.

"In a suburban or rural community that tends to have much smaller hospitals to begin with, the impact of a surge, I think, would be quite significant."

"In this scenario, you have the potential for 30 percent to 50 percent of the entire population to be sick and not able to respond, the government essentially crashing, and nobody to help you," he said.

"That's why I'm saying it's important for individuals and families and businesses and faith-based groups ... to start developing their plan to take care of their needs, and not depend on other people to do that for them."

[Mojorabbit]

6. My hubby is a family physician

and I am a retired nurse. I am disabled so could not work but it scares me to death to think of my husband working in that situation.

[w8liftinglady]

11. we work in the same area...

our ICU beds are always full...not enough help-always using agency nurses...it WOULD be a nightmare.

[lovuian]

12. The healthcare workers in Canada are government workers

just like civil service or military... they get benefits and pensions. The government is their employer...threatening 100,000 dollar fine is ridiculously low when its your life...

many have children family

Their afraid of an exodus and rightfully so

Now in America we have no government running the show independant hospitals and supplied most time with agency nurses...

This is just employee and employer relationship...

My gut feeling here is america will institute the draft...

and women who are childbearing age will have to be very careful plus mothers and fathers with children would be endangering them...

The healthcare system would crumble

[sam sarrha]

5. there wont be anyone left to file the paper work.. no problem

[ljaycox]

7. I know an ICU nurse..

and she told me that the people at the hospital have talked about this quite a bit and many will give up their licenses before they expos their families to this virus, should it hit. I asked her how much care they can really give, and if it something that non-medical people could do. She told me that if you get to where you need full ventilation and the other big time measures, you were not likely to make it anyway. She said IV fluids and and minor types of respiratory help would be the most that could be done anyway--along with anti-biotics used to fight opportunistic infections (most flu victims die of pneumonia I think?) It seems to me we could train the population to take more care of itself and make some equipment and supplies available to be used in the home. You could train some specialists to deliver equipment and supplies while wearing protective gear. No society can afford to keep as many hospital beds available as it would take to deal with a flu pandemic.

[Mojorabbit]

8. Dr Woodson has written

a guide for home care of a flu patient if things get bad. Good for most lay people to have printed out.
the first part is kind of a history of flu but half way through he gives detailed care plans if you are stuck at home caring for loved ones..

http://www.fluwikie.com/index.php?n=Consequences.PandemicPreparednessGuides

[WhiteTara]

13. thanks. I just bookmarked that

for later study. :hi:

[CHIMO]

9. Gilbert And Sullivan

Type of thinking.

From the little bit of data in the article, it appears that it covers everything.

How about water treatment, garbage removal, taxi drivers, bus drivers, cooks... Where does one stop? How about the banking system and..

Utterly Gilbert and Sullivan material.

[lovuian]

10. Ok this is the big dilemna for America... their healthcare workers

aren't government workers ... they have NO CONTROL...

[Mojorabbit]

14. The govt has everyone's liscence who is practicing in the US

I just don't know if they would try and conscript people in a case like this. If a large percentage of health workers do not show due to no protective masks and other PPE what is to be done? A lot of life insurance policies from what I have read have a clause that excludes pandemics( I am not sure how prevelant this is). Can they ask people to put their life on the line with no protection and possibly leave their family destitute? I hope the planning on this really revs up and we don't end up doing it by the seat of our pants if it happens.

[Karmakaze]

16. I personally don't have any problem with this...

Well maybe just one - healthcare workers must be given full protection when they work, as well of course, as hazardous duty pay.

One of the biggest fears with healthcare systems is not the equipment or even the patient load as such, the biggest fear is that the ONLY people trained to help others in this situation refuse to help. Take for example the New Orleans police officers that just walked off the job. How many lives were lost because they refused to do the job they were paid to do?

I understand the fear healthcare workers have, but the fact is they have the same threats right now - AIDS and other diseases already put healthcare workers at risk, but in the early stages of a Flu epidemic many healthcare workers would be exposed anyway, before the full threat is realised.

I just wouldnt like the idea that at the first sign of trouble, all the trained people just take off, which is bound to make any outbreak even MORE deadly.

[AnneD]

17. I followed the SARS outbreak from the beginning...

and followed it in Toronto from the first outbreak (epidemiology is sort of a hobby with me). Nurses, first responders, and Docs were stuck in 2 hospitals. Even after it was determined what it was, protective gears was woefully inadequate. I was in e-mail communication with a Nurse up there during that period. Many felt abandon and screwed (much like my Nurse friend that was air lifted off the roof in NO). Many said they would not do that again. I am sure this law is in response to that feeling. Now Canada's overall health care system is better than our. Should we have an outbreak, it would be disasterous.

I get those sign ups all the time but frankly after a career of being screwed over (under paid overworked to the detriment of providing decent care) by Corperate health care, all they'll get from me is a middle finger. The Gov had always been able to do a skills draft and I have no doubt they will try that nonsense. A pandemic is not like being snowed in or stranded by a hurricane. This would be an order that put me AND my family directly in harms way.

Do any of you Nurses remember when they tried to cram the small pox vaccinations down our throats. I refused, having had the vaccine in childhood. If you read the fine print on the DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE waiver, once you had the shot, you were a first responder and they could yank your ass to where ever they needed you. When Doc's and Nurses refused citing potential side effects and demanding compensation....Congress piddled around and they finally decide that Nurses were worth $250K. Since it was 'voluntary' there was no workman's comp (so no disability).

http://nhpf.ags.com/pdfs_ib/IB788_Smallpox_3-12-03.pdf

Well, lo and behold...if you had ANY heart problems-you were at risk for death and they had a number of deaths that resulted in them quietly closing the program.


Sorry, I will not be sacrificed on the alter because some sorry assed government couldn't make a better plan for health care or to protect the population. Nurses have been crying out for over 15 yrs now about the abysmal conditions and I have seen no changes. We get a nice patronizing pat on the head as the shoo us out the door.
I'll do what I can when I safely can, but frankly...it's just not worth it.

[rainbow4321]

18. Here is the part that worries me...

The fine print on the selective service webpage that is about medical personnel being "drafted in a crisis, implemented in connection w/ a national mobilization in an emergency".

http://www.sss.gov/FactSheets/FSmedical.pdf


I could see chimp and his people tweaking this just enough to where a bird flu crisis would become covered by this "draft" and we would be sent where ever they wanted us to go. Given that our military medical people are all over seas (already spread too thin), probably are not enough of them HERE to cover a national health crisis.

[AnneD]

19. I have always said...

that the next draft would be a skills draft...