IDSA: Mandatory Flu Shots Raise Staff Vaccination Rates
Oct. 25, 2010— -- VANCOUVER -- It's possible to immunize nearly all health care workers in a hospital against the flu -- but it often takes a big stick.
It took a mandatory vaccination rule -- backed up by the threat of dismissal -- to reach rates of close to 100 percent in three hospitals, researchers reported at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America here.
A host of other approaches -- including education campaigns, easy access to free vaccine, and peer support -- were able to raise rates markedly, according to Dr. Kristen Feemster of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Bur despite such programs, "our rates had stagnated at about 90 percent," she said.
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The hospital introduced a mandatory policy last year and saw its vaccination rate jump from 92 percent to 99.3 percent, Feemster said.
The policy allowed for religious and medical exemptions, but only 57 staffers -- out of some 9,300 -- took advantage of that loophole, Feemster said. Another nine, she said, refused to get vaccinated and were dismissed.
Overall, she reported, the move was both popular and seen as coercive: 74 percent of staff who answered a voluntary anonymous questionnaire said they agreed with the mandate, but 72 percent saw it as coercive. On the other hand, 96 percent said the rule was important for protecting patients and staff.
The first institution to enforce such a policy -- Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle -- has also seen rates close to 100 percent in the five years since it was implemented, according to Dr. Robert Rakita of the University of Washington.
Despite a legal challenge by the nurses' union, Rakita said, the hospital has maintained an average vaccination rate of 98.1 percent since 2005. Interestingly, although the nurses' union had won a grievance against the policy, 96 percent of the nurses got the flu shot anyway in 2009, he said.
