Through the Eyes (and Heart) of a Dispensable Health Care Worker

“What do you want to do with your life when you grow up?”, I remember being asked in my final years of High School. I didn’t know the answer but I knew it involved helping others. From my early childhood days of babying newborn animals on our family farm, getting up in the middle of the night to comfort crying puppies or because my brother was ill, I was always so deeply and inherently drawn to anything and anyone that needed help, needed healing, needed a shoulder to cry on. My mother called me a little nurse as a child because I was always there helping anything and anyone sick or unwell. I had also come from a long line of strong women who were nurses down to my great grandmother. Being a helper, a giver, a healer was in my blood.

Fast forward to my University years, I started volunteering at several residential care facilities as well as a rehab unit at a hospital. It was then that I became familiar with the profession of Occupational Therapy and in which my desire to pursue healthcare was truly solidified. I was immediately drawn with my heart, my mind and my soul. I still remember moments of my volunteering where a patient held my hand, looked me deep in the eyes and said “Thank you”. I remember the very essence of these experiences so clearly. THIS was it. THIS was my calling. My career was to help others and off I started on my 6 year journey of becoming an OT.

While these years were wonderful, they were also full of all-nighters, stress, tears, sweat, feeling like giving up and a financial burden of nearly 100k. When I finally passed my board exams and became registered, it felt incredible. All of that struggle and hardship had brought me to a place where I could finally begin my career. Now I had the knowledge, training and license to tangibly help those in need.

I had a wonderful 10 year career with the health authority. The walls around my desk were filled with Thank You cards from patients and proud certifications from ongoing education I had taken to advance my career. I was in perfect standing with my College and had terrific performance reviews. Suddenly, a pandemic was announced and much of our day to day work life was reimagined to keep everyone safe. I was proud to play an essential role during this time, even being touted a “hero”. And then….everything came to a screeching halt.

In 2021, I was told I am no longer needed and I am a “health hazard”. After 10 years of faithful service, I was “terminated” over a video call in which I was read my sentence off a script as if I was a criminal. There was no emotion, no regret, no “Thank you for your service”….NOTHING at all. I was treated as if I was worthless, an enemy, dispensable, uncaring, “anti-vax”, anti-science…etc. My “crime” was making an informed decision following my code of ethics, principles and morals. I was in total emotional turmoil, grieving the loss of a career I was so passionate about…a career I had sacrificed so much for. And suddenly, it was gone, POOF, it disappeared as if it had never even happened. To add to my severe detriment, our department carried massive caseloads and were already struggling to meet the needs of our community. I worried about my long-term clients who would now suddenly need to be added to someone else’s enormous caseload without any say, any choice or any explanation.

Most people don’t understand my decision and that’s okay. That’s what makes humans beautifully diverse. But I wish they’d understand that I didn’t make this decision LIGHTLY. I was giving up the part of me that (before my kids came along), was what fueled my engine. I wish people would genuinely ask me, “why did you give it all up?” rather than judging my motives as selfish. It is my love for people, science and ethics and not hate, that required me to choose this way.

Losing my career was awful enough but on top of that, the media continued to label me with terrible, demeaning, negative words. I am none of those divisive labels. I am not anti-science. I spent hundreds of hours seeking out all the science and evidence and perspectives I could find on this new virus and experimental mRNA technology. I sought out the expertise of 3 health care providers so I could be fully informed. To each appointment, I came prepared with a long list of questions which unfortunately, couldn’t be answered. Instead, I was told to just “trust public health advice”. For me, this wasn’t good enough. I would NEVER tell a patient to take my prescribed treatment because they need to just “trust me”. I would find the answers to their questions and if those answers didn’t exist, well then we would discuss what ongoing treatment and informed decision making looked like in absence of the necessary data. I am pro-science and don’t base medical decisions on trust and belief. If the vaccine is as effective as they claim, then those who are vaccinated ARE PROTECTED regardless of my status. Yet, the Provincial Health Order that removed me from the workforce was based on “reason to believe” that an unvaccinated healthcare worker was a “health hazard”. It was not based on scientific research and data to back up this claim. Through my years of schooling, I can say that I never wrote a school paper based on “belief”. It had to be firmly rooted in scientific evidence. What the science does currently say is that the COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission. This is stated in the February 16, 2022 Vancouver Coastal Health Officers’ plea to UBC to not de-register students who have not declared their COVID-19 vaccination status. It also states, “there is now no material difference in likelihood that a UBC student or staff member who is vaccinated or unvaccinated may be infected and potentially infectious to others”. I am currently healthy, eager and able to work, yet I am being prevented by the unscientific belief of an unelected decision maker.

I stand firmly rooted in my code of ethics and morals which are the very bedrock that medicine and healthcare is built upon. This means freedom to make health care decisions without threat or coercion. It means individual autonomy to choose your own course of treatment. It also means that I will treat you with respect and dignity even if I do not agree with you or even if I believe your choices are harmful to you. I have spent a lot of time in my career both treating individuals who have made very poor life decisions and also defending the rights of my patients who choose to live at risk. That is THEIR decision, not mine. All I can do is inform but I cannot and should not make your decision for you. By standing firm in these ethics and morals, I am preserving everyone’s right to medical ethics, everyone’s right to choose an individualized treatment for themselves and preventing the slippery slope of mandating what you do with your body or put into your body. I am holding the line making sure that your children don’t have to grow up in a world in which consent is replaced by coercion. Is it worth losing my career and livelihood to protect everyone’s medical freedoms and children’s futures? YES!

Let’s fast forward now to our current state in 2022. In February, Dr. Bonnie Henry announced that all private regulated healthcare workers will be required to be vaccinated by March 24th or they would lose their license to practice. This announcement made me feel as if I was being stripped of the very essence of my being;I was being stripped of all my hard work, education, experience and a passion that fulfilled a deep purpose within me to help others. I cried for me because I was devasted beyond words. I cried for me because I find myself growing far too accustomed to living in a world in which I’m constantly being labeled, dehumanized and having more and more taken away from me to force me into a corner with only one option. The government calls this “choice”. But as my nature is to help those around me, I cried more for YOU. Millions of patients would lose their healthcare providers, their timely access to care, their choices in healthcare providers and their health will be detrimentally affected. I cried for you because you have been lied to and manipulated and deceived by having certain science and research withheld from you. I cried for those health care workers still on the front lines so short staffed and burnt out, barely coping with no time or space for rest. I cried for you all.

As this deadline drew closer, a written public health order was finally provided. While it includes some very discriminatory and divisive language and unscientific beliefs such as, “the continued presence of unvaccinated people in the population…constitutes a health hazard”, it had scrapped the planned requirement for health-care professionals in all sectors to be vaccinated, FOR NOW. The public is largely unaware but this change in mandate didn’t occur because the science suddenly changed or because more consideration was given to the impact on public health. This mandate changed because of all the work being done behind the scenes by a diverse group of private and public health care professionals and their legal teams to stop medical discrimination, maintain medical confidentiality and maintain the very foundation of medical ethics. We are a LARGE team, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, fighting for YOU. Some of you are aware and some of you don’t know it…yet. We are some of the most critical and independent thinkers, fiercest patient advocates with deeply ingrained ethics and sense of right and wrong. We analyze, we reason, we question the most “settled science” out there. We are unafraid to make decisions that break our hearts but give peace to our souls. We are a force to be reckoned with. Lets be clear, my large unified team and I are PRO-SCIENCE, PRO-ETHICS, PRO-CHOICE, PRO-TRUTH AND PRO-JUSTICE. We will not rest until our beautiful province is restored back to a place of respect, dignity, equality and freedom of choice over our OWN bodies.

Anonymous former Occupational Therapist BA, MOT, COTBC

Current Dispensable Health Care Worker