{"id":1336150,"date":"2022-02-24T06:20:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-24T11:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1336150"},"modified":"2022-02-24T08:10:51","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T13:10:51","slug":"premier-childrens-hospital-fires-unvaxxed-nurses-after-questioning-and-rejecting-their-religious-beliefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/premier-childrens-hospital-fires-unvaxxed-nurses-after-questioning-and-rejecting-their-religious-beliefs\/","title":{"rendered":"Premier Children\u2019s Hospital Fires Unvaxxed Nurses After Questioning And Rejecting Their Religious Beliefs"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpremier-childrens-hospital-fires-unvaxxed-nurses-after-questioning-and-rejecting-their-religious-beliefs%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1336150&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>\u201cI just love it. I love my job. I love what I do, and this has been really hard. Sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The pediatric nurse, who had been working at Children\u2019s Wisconsin for 12 years, choked back tears as she stressed her passion for treating sick children to the chaplain and human resources representative tasked with questioning whether her religious beliefs were sincere enough to earn her an exemption from the Milwaukee hospital\u2019s vaccine mandate, which took effect in November. <\/p>\n<p>This nurse, whose religious exemption appeal interview was shared with The Federalist on the condition of anonymity, was finally granted an exemption after first being denied, then appealing, then being grilled by the two hospital representatives about her religious convictions. Some of her colleagues weren\u2019t so fortunate.<\/p>\n<p>Of the five appeal interview recordings reviewed by The Federalist, only two of the employees were granted religious exemptions despite the same general questions being asked to each of the Children\u2019s workers and similar themes in each of their answers. The other three were denied.<\/p>\n<p>Staff was notified in July about the vaccine mandate, which required them to get the Covid-19 shot by mid-November. Employees had until Sept. 1 to request a religious exemption, according to a vaccine overview document that Children\u2019s WI President and CEO Peggy Troy emailed to all hospital employees, and they were notified of the decisions later.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the people who were denied began seeking new jobs, Alyssa Pollow, a nurse practitioner and former Children\u2019s Wisconsin provider, told The Federalist. Others wanted to stay, however, and appealed, especially if they had any seniority. <\/p>\n<p>To appeal a denial, employees had to email Employee Health and Wellness and Human Resources, which would set up Zoom interviews to grill applicants about their religious beliefs and point out apparent contradictions. <\/p>\n<p>These interviews were conducted by chaplain Ian Butts and one person from HR, such as Sharyl Niebler or Staci Benz, but Butts conducted most of the interrogation. The questions included the specifics of the employees\u2019 personal religious convictions and their vaccination record, with Butts pressing on what he considered to be contradictions. <\/p>\n<p>Two particularly leading questions regarded the specifics of how the employees would keep their patients safe without being vaccinated, implying a moral implication of refusing a vaccine, as well as how they could square working for a hospital that mandated something so contrary to their personal convictions as a condition of employment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn my opinion, he\u2019s so over the line with how he is asking these questions,\u201d Pollow told The Federalist. \u201cAnd for him to be their religious arbiter of whose religious beliefs are more virtuous than someone else is such a violation of privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt just feels so invasive,\u201d she added, even calling it an \u201cassault on religion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Butts and the HR representative would then relay the information they collected to an overarching committee called the COVID Religious Waiver Committee, the members of which were kept hidden, shielding the exemption arbiters of any accountability.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/IMG_1122-613x1024-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-268024\" width=\"407\" height=\"679\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/IMG_1122-613x1024-1.jpg 613w, https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/IMG_1122-180x300.jpg 180w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/IMG_1122-768x1283-1.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/IMG_1122-920x1536-1.jpg 920w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/IMG_1122.jpg 1170w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>The committee also offered no transparency regarding the reasons employees were denied exemptions. \u201cBecause Children\u2019s must preserve the integrity of its waiver request review process, the specific reasons for denials are not shared,\u201d the Employee Health and Wellness Covid-19 team wrote in response to an employee\u2019s query about that person\u2019s religious waiver denial.<\/p>\n<p>Children\u2019s Wisconsin did not answer The Federalist\u2019s questions about who was on the waiver committee. It also would not say how many people applied for religious exemptions, how many of those were approved, and how the current number of vacancies compares to pre-pandemic levels. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll staff members at Children\u2019s Wisconsin currently comply with our vaccine requirements,\u201d Children\u2019s spokesman Andy Brodzeller replied to The Federalist\u2019s inquiry. \u201cMore than 98 percent of our team members met our Nov. 15 deadline to be vaccinated or have an exemption approved. \u2026 We were sad to see the less than 100 people leave our organization when the requirement went into effect, but respect their decision to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The response from Children\u2019s leaves many questions unanswered, however, such as how many people weren\u2019t included in the denominator of that 98 percent because they resigned upon learning about the mandate, long before the Nov. 15 deadline, without even trying to acquire an exemption. And the language about the \u201c100 people leav[ing]\u201d implies a voluntary decision, so how many more were terminated? It\u2019s eerily reminiscent of the <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/10\/how-vaccine-mandates-caused-dangerous-hospital-care-shortages-in-wisconsin\/\">public relations wordsmithing conducted<\/a> by Gundersen Health Systems, another Wisconsin hospital system, to conceal its vaccine mandate staffing crisis.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[READ: <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/10\/how-vaccine-mandates-caused-dangerous-hospital-care-shortages-in-wisconsin\/\">In Wisconsin, Hospital Shortages Aren\u2019t From Covid, They\u2019re From Vaccine Mandates<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Judging by the disparity in outcomes for the five aforementioned employees who appealed despite the similarities in their responses, it appears Children\u2019s doesn\u2019t have a strong or consistent rationale for its waiver decisions. <\/p>\n<p>Pollow said that when one manager was given a list of about a dozen staff she was going to lose, she demanded a meeting with decision-makers, where she \u201craised hell\u201d about the need for all those staff members to remain on her team. The next week, Pollow said, the majority of those staff had their appeals approved, leading her to believe that the COVID Religious Waiver Committee was making its decisions in an effort to appease the managers in certain departments who were willing to stick out their necks for their employees. Or perhaps more likely, they were trying to \u201cspread out their losses across the departments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s because <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/02\/10\/how-vaccine-mandates-caused-dangerous-hospital-care-shortages-in-wisconsin\/\">we\u2019ve seen the catastrophic effects<\/a> of these vaccine mandates and other poor management and working conditions, which have left other hospitals severely understaffed. <\/p>\n<p>Gundersen Health Systems in La Crosse, Wisconsin, has severely hemorrhaged staff as a result of the vaccine mandate, contrary to its deceptive self-reporting on the matter. Those terminations paired with workers quitting over low wages have led to underserved patients. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithin the hospital, nursing shortages have led to unsafe staffing situations where nurses and CNAs are being forced to take more patients than what is safe due to there not being enough nursing staff present. Patients are being forgotten on bed pans or are falling because there is simply not enough staff to safely take care of them,\u201d one former Gundersen nurse wrote in a community impact statement. Although she had been granted a religious exemption from that hospital, she was so disgusted by the letter\u2019s language that she resigned anyway. <\/p>\n<p>As a result of low-wage staff jumping ship, she said nurses had to use the bare minimum of linens, even going so far as to fashion makeshift pillowcases out of hospital gowns. One weekend in October, Gundersen had to shut down a dozen beds due to nursing shortages, she said, adding that it has also canceled heart valve replacement surgeries because it didn\u2019t have enough post-op staff.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"nBTb\"><\/p>\n[embedded content]\n<p><\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Like Gundersen, Children\u2019s Wisconsin appears to be scrambling to plug staffing holes. Even back in September, hospital wings blasted out desperate pleas for help, captured in the screenshots below. After denying religious exemptions and therefore losing more staff, Children\u2019s has had to get especially creative.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"650\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.36.32-PM-1024x650-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-268063\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.36.32-PM-1024x650-1.png 1024w, https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.36.32-PM-300x190.png 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.36.32-PM-768x488-1.png 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.36.32-PM-1536x975-1.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.36.32-PM.png 1578w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"651\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.37.37-PM-1024x651-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-268064\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.37.37-PM-1024x651-1.png 1024w, https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.37.37-PM-300x191.png 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.37.37-PM-768x488-1.png 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.37.37-PM-1536x976-1.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-23-at-3.37.37-PM.png 1580w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Senior leadership started \u201cHelping Hands\u201d where employees could sign up for 2-4 hour shifts to do the necessary tasks left undone by short-staffing, such as restocking linens, folding laundry, mopping floors, or working in the cafeteria. This email from the end of January says \u201conly 92 out of 234 shifts are currently filled.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"457\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-22-at-5.39.04-PM-1024x457-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-268025\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-22-at-5.39.04-PM-1024x457-1.png 1024w, https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-22-at-5.39.04-PM-300x134.png 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-22-at-5.39.04-PM-768x343-1.png 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-22-at-5.39.04-PM-1536x686-1.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-22-at-5.39.04-PM-2048x914-1.png 2048w\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Like other Wisconsin hospitals, Children\u2019s is also trying to recruit travel nurses to fill vacancies, despite many travel nurses being able to evade vaccination requirements by being employed not directly by hospitals but by travel agencies. (Below is one example of a Gundersen nurse who said she was fired in November for not being vaccinated and has now accepted a 13-week travel RN contract with the same hospital despite still being unvaccinated.)<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"850\" height=\"276\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-22-at-5.57.32-PM.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-268026\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-22-at-5.57.32-PM.png 850w, https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-22-at-5.57.32-PM-300x97.png 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Screen-Shot-2022-02-22-at-5.57.32-PM-768x249-1.png 768w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>Not to mention, travel nurses are not specialized to particular institutions, especially pediatrics, meaning that when hospitals outsource this care, it can cause patients to suffer needlessly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think they are so desperate and they know they have created a staffing shortage crisis,\u201d Pollow said. <\/p>\n<p>Pollow no longer works at Children\u2019s, but it isn\u2019t because she was denied an exemption or refused to get vaccinated. In fact, she was vaccinated all the way back in January 2021. In December, after the mandate set in, however, she quit. <\/p>\n<p>Her resignation is worth noting because it suggests that employees in her situation likely haven\u2019t been included in Children\u2019s self-reported \u201cless than 100 people leav[ing] when the requirement went into effect.\u201d Their departures are scattered and don\u2019t coincide with the mandate going into effect.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor vaxxed people, we are just fed up with the BS,\u201d she said. \u201cThis has really opened our eyes to the toxic environment that our senior leadership officials have created and that they are blindly mandating things and not considering the true quality of care that are being impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For this reason, Children\u2019s probably isn\u2019t done losing staff. Pollow indicated more people are still employed but have one foot out the door. Some of them were lucky enough to get their religious waivers approved but are struggling over how long they will stay because the hospital is mandating weekly testing for the unvaccinated only \u2014 a serious double standard since the vaccinated can still get and spread Covid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are definitely still seeing the effects of this,\u201d Pollow said. \u201cAnd we will continue to see it for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"LF2RW1fnWaMCys5UzJTwyU65luq8Hw6vQJra9c7jlNdOi7O8ZVPMRsxfigKnVp0Fz4ovmhIpgj0hXG\"><\/p>\n[embedded content]\n<p><\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts\/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kyleezempel\">@kyleezempel<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI just love it. I love my job. I love what I do, and this has been really hard. Sorry.\u201d The pediatric nurse, who had been working at Children\u2019s Wisconsin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1336150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1336150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1336150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1336150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1336150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}