VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – While BC’s Ministry of Health insists flu shots, or masks,  for healthcare workers are mandatory as of Saturday, it has decided not to penalize workers for non-compliance.

The ministry says for the next year, it will stress the benefits of the flu shot for the workers, rather than forcing them to get the vaccine.

“Health authorities will be taking a balanced and measured approach in the first year of this policy and will not be disciplining employees, but instead will focus on education and awareness to secure compliance with the policy,” says the ministry.

BC Nurses’ Union president Deb MacPherson likes the revised policy. “Well, I think the new approach is a saner approach. I think anytime you have policies that involve punishment and coercion, naming of names, wearing of badges and labels, it causes hostility, division and alarm in the workplace,” she insists.

“We’re reverting to a place where nurses use their best clinical judgment to make their own decisions based on the evidence, and wearing masks when they deem it’s medically necessary to protect their patients and themselves  without fear of punishment and retribution is good, sound practice.”

The decision is also being applauded by the Health Sciences Association.

“We also recognize that individual health care workers have a right to make their personal health decisions. If they choose not to be vaccinated for any number of factors – including experiences with bad side effects to vaccines, and fundamental, philosophical, or religious objections to vaccination – that is their right,” says HSA president Reid Johnson.

MacPherson says she doesn’t know how many of the province’s nurses have actually rolled up their sleeves, but she’s still encouraging everyone to get a flu shot  because she says  it’s the best protection against getting sick.

Controvery swirls over the use of flu shots. In November, a doctor with the UK-based Cochrane Collaboration publicly questioned the evidence used to justify the mandatory flu-shot policy.