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Support for mandatory health care worker influenza vaccination among allied health professionals, technical staff, and medical students

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2012.05.019Get rights and content

Although policies mandating annual influenza vaccination among health care workers (HCWs) are recommended, little is known about which HCWs support mandatory vaccination. We surveyed non-physician, non-nursing HCWs to identify beliefs associated with supporting mandatory HCW vaccination. Although similarities were identified, some beliefs and concerns associated with supporting mandatory vaccination differed among HCW groups. Policy makers should understand these differences and address beliefs and concerns of all HCW groups when attempting to implement a mandatory influenza vaccination policy.

Section snippets

Methods

Mount Sinai Medical Center is a large, academic medical center in New York City. Despite the rescinding of the statewide vaccine mandate, influenza vaccination is strongly encouraged among all employees, staff, and students. Annual vaccination is offered free at multiple venues through employee and student health programs. E-mail messages, posters, and newsletters encourage vaccination.

From May to July 2010, a cross-sectional survey study was performed to assess influenza vaccine uptake and

Results

Surveys were completed and returned by 416 individuals (116 AHP, 122 TS, and 178 MS) (Table 1). Among participants, 272 (65%) were female, 117 (28%) were married, and 236 (57%) were younger than 30 years. Mandatory HCW influenza vaccination was supported by 46% of AHP, 53% of TS, and 78% of MS. Self-reported seasonal vaccine uptake during the 2009–2010 season was 78%, 61%, and 87%, respectively.

Among AHP, belief in efficacy of HCW vaccination for self-protection and reducing infection risk to

Discussion

Opposition to mandatory HCW influenza vaccination remains a challenge in implementing mandatory vaccination policies. In this study, specific beliefs were associated with support for mandatory vaccination among a racially diverse group of AHP, TS, and MS. Understanding and addressing these beliefs may garner support for mandatory vaccination programs.

Consistent with the health beliefs model, beliefs regarding vaccine efficacy in preventing HCW infection and reducing influenza transmission to

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    The flu vaccination coverage among this specific group varies a lot in different countries, ranging from 4% in the Czech Republic to over 85% in the USA and Canada [17,21,26], sometimes being even lower compared to other HCWs [14]. Furthermore, most of these studies only involved medical students [14–25,27], while to our knowledge, only a limited number of studies investigated students attending nursing schools or other health profession degree programs [26,28]. In studies comparing medical students to other healthcare students, the results showed that medical students were significantly more likely to get vaccinated compared to nursing or midwifery students [26,28].

  • Healthcare Workers’ (HCWs) attitudes towards mandatory influenza vaccination: A systematic review and meta-analysis

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    Because of the scarce number of studies reporting stratified subsample data, calculation of RRs and subsequent meta-analysis was possible only regarding vaccination status. In particular, sixteen studies were included [12,34,36,38,40,43,48,50,55,59,64,69,71,77,82–83]. Vaccinated HCWs had an increased “risk” to agree with mandatory vaccination policies, and the difference between vaccinated and non-vaccinated HCWs was statistically significant (RR: 1.94; 95%C.I.:1.48–2.55, p < 0.01), although in presence of high heterogeneity (I2 = 97%).

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Study was funded through CDC/NIOSH Pilot Project Award No. T42OH008422 through the (NY/NJ) Universities Education and Research Center.

The data in the manuscript were presented, in part, as an Abstract at the Society of Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) 2011 Annual Scientific Meeting, March 2011, Dallas, TX.

Conflicts of interest: None to report.

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