Unimmunized doctors in New Brunswick will be suspended at midnight

Key takeaways:

• A group of New Brunswick doctors will be suspended at midnight today for failing to get vaccinated.
• All were given enough notice, according to Schollenberg, that their licenses would be suspended if they didn’t get vaccinated. 

For failing to get vaccinated, a group of New Brunswick doctors will be suspended at midnight today.

According to Dr. Ed Schollenberg, registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New Brunswick, the actual number is less than ten.

Only two of them are family doctors, he claimed, but the number of patients who have been affected is unknown.

Doctors, according to Schollenberg, must set an example and not jeopardise their patients’ health.

“If you don’t get vaccinated yourself, you can’t advise your patients to be vaccinated,” he stated.

Also read: N.B. reported 55 new COVID-19 cases with 1 death, 66 are hospitalised

Both the provincial health authorities, according to Schollenberg, have required doctors to provide proof of immunization in the recent few months.

“There was no other way to do it,” he explained, “since when doctors get vaccinated, it looks like any other person getting vaccinated.”

Some had been vaccinated but hadn’t bothered to show proof. The list was eventually reduced to less than ten hospitals, all of which were part of the Horizon Health Network. None of them came from Vitalité.

All were given enough notice, according to Schollenberg, that their licenses would be suspended if they didn’t get vaccinated. The letter was given out last week, and the consequences will begin on Wednesday.

According to Schollenberg, there is no distinction between unvaccinated doctors and those who haven’t shown proof of immunization.

“As far as the hospital is concerned, it’s technically the same thing.”

He stated that those who had proof should have produced it by now.

“So far as we can determine, the ones we’re dealing with haven’t been vaccinated at all.”

Vaccination-resistant physicians, according to Schollenberg, are expressing similar worries to the general population, much of which is based on vaccine misinformation.

According to him, the most prevalent reason given by doctors is that they believe they have a medical condition that prevents them from getting the vaccine safely.

According to Schollenberg, the college considered telling the public about the license suspensions but ultimately opted against it.

Patients will find out whether their doctor has been suspended “as soon as they try to book an appointment,” he said.

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The aim, according to Schollenberg, is to reinstate physicians once they have been vaccinated, although he doubts this will have much of an impact.

“Especially with physicians, it’s quite difficult to change their ideas after they’ve made up their minds.”

It may not be as easy as picking up and going to another province for a suspended New Brunswick doctor.

Next week, Schollenberg plans to meet with his provincial counterparts to discuss whether a physician’s vaccination status should be automatically shared with the next jurisdiction.

Source: CBC News

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