A nurse at Minnesota Regions Hospital, a part of the Healthpartners care network, revealed an internal memo from Healthpartners president that tells clinicians not to offer medical exemptions for the COVID vaccine for their patients. The letter also specifically says clinicians should not offer exemptions for those that are pregnant.
The nurse says the email, sent by Healthpartners President and CEO Angela Walsh, details what Walsh calls “Guidance for exemption requests from patients.” The email says the hospital recommends “against providing medical exemptions (including pregnancy)” unless the patient asking for the exemption has a medical allergy to an ingredient in the COVID vaccine.
The email then says if a person has allergies, the clinician should “work with their patients to find another vaccine with different ingredients that would be more suitable” before providing any sort of exemption letter.
The nurse, Andi, said that this is a huge problem because “they’re telling our clinicians how to treat us.”
She said the president of the Healthpartners organization, which includes several hospitals and clinics, is “dictating to my doctor how they can and cannot treat me.”
In the video posted by Mask Off MN, the nurse then shows a definition from her nursing textbook that outlines assault, which she said, “is a crime.” Also, the nurse said in the video that according to her nursing textbook, the definition of assault and battery includes “administering an injection after the patient has refused it.”
It goes on to say that “Threatening to do any of these actions if the patient does not cooperate is assault.”
Andi said that these mandates go against everything that they are trained to do as nurses and doctors.
She went on to make the case that in the future, some of the clinicians that are administering the COVID vaccination could potentially lose their medical license for forcibly administering these vaccinations.
She said, “They are asking us to be victims of a crime and they are asking us to commit crimes in order to keep our jobs.”
Also, the nurse said, “How does the CEO and president of a hospital dictate to my doctors that you have to perform a crime, you have to commit a crime, on an employee in order to keep their job?”
Healthpartners is one of several Minnesota health care providers who have decided to mandate the COVID vaccine for their employees.
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Hayley Tschetter is a reporter with The Minnesota Sun | Star News Network. Follow Hayley on Twitter or like her Facebook page. Send news tips to [email protected].
Photo “Regions Hospital” by McGhiever CC BY-SA 4.0.
