Posted July 14, 2003.

Toronto Hospital Librarian Goes to Court over SARS

A librarian at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto is suing the health-care facility for $2.1 million ($1.5 million U.S.), claiming that she was fired when she refused to continue screening visitors and staff for severe acute respiratory syndrome symptoms during the recent outbreak. Kellee Kaulback, who worked at the hospital for two years as a senior information specialist, said her manager required her and others on the library staff to serve as SARS screeners beginning April 1.

Mount Sinai was treating a close relative of the first person in Canada to die of the illness when Ontario officials barred nonessential staff, including library staff, from the hospital.

Kaulback alleges that she discovered after her first two shifts as a screener that her mask had been fitted incorrectly and that she had not been trained to take people’s temperatures properly. After expressing her concerns and offering to work at one of the hospital’s other two sites, her manager told her she would be removed from the payroll if she didn’t work as a screener.

“I’m a librarian by training, and I’m certainly not a health professional,” Kaulback said in the July 10 Toronto Star. She decided to sue after the hospital ignored her request for severance pay.

Posted July 14, 2003.