Royal Inland Hospital.

(ASHLEY LEGASSIC - REPORTER / iNFOnews.ca)

A former Kamloops doctor tried and failed in her bid to treat patients at Royal Inland Hospital without a COVID-19 vaccine.

Dr. Theresa Szezepaniak was officially stripped of her hospital privileges in 2022, but she was already barred from practicing there for nearly a year. Weeks after her privileges were removed, Szezepaniak appealed the decision and claimed her Charter rights were violated.

The BC Hospital Appeal Board upheld Interior Health's decision to take away Dr. Szezepaniak's hospital privileges on Nov. 20, according to a recently published decision.

Dr. Szezepaniak has practiced in BC hospitals for 21 years. Interior Health offered her a position as a hospitalist at Royal Inland in 2019, which she accepted and her full-time work started there in March 2020 — the same month COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic.

When vaccines were made available more than a year after the pandemic began, Interior Health employees and hospital workers were given until Nov. 15 to get their first dose or a medical exemption. Dr. Szezepaniak tried but failed to get an exemption, according to the decision.

Dr. Szezepaniak felt she was being "blackmailed or coerced into receiving an experimental injection," according to the decision.

In an email, she told the hospital's chief of staff they would be liable to legal proceedings, suggesting her Charter rights were being infringed upon.

She also served Interior Health with a notice of liability in November, which were erroneous legal letters commonly used by anti-vaccine mandate protesters during the pandemic.

She managed to find work as a family doctor in 100 Mile House during the winter of 2021 after two months of unemployment, but told the appeal board she'd like to return to the hospital.

"No longer being able to describe herself as a hospitalist and having to explain that her medical staff position and hospital privileges were cancelled through a disciplinary process has caused her humiliation," the decision read.

She sought to both regain her hospital privileges and her employment, which would be reduced to part-time because of her relocation to 100 Mile House.

The appeal board found the Interior Health board was enforcing its own bylaws and a provincial health order. In doing so, it found the health authority did not infringe on Dr. Szezepaniak's Charter rights.

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