Brief reportA novel approach to improve influenza vaccination rates among health care professionals: A prospective randomized controlled trial
Section snippets
Methods
Eligible study participants consisted of 6723 physicians and nurses with predominantly direct patient contact at an urban tertiary care hospital. From this group, we selected 800 at random, 200 each from the following 4 categories: professional staff, resident physicians, registered nurses, and licensed practical nurses. Within each job category, 50 subjects were assigned to receive either (1) no additional intervention beyond the usual multifactored approach (eg, educational posters,
Results
The overall influenza vaccination rate for all 800 study subjects was 41%. The rate reported for all hospital employees during the same time period was 38.2%. The number of vaccinated subjects did not differ by occupation (P = .87, Table 1) or intervention group (P = .66, Table 2). There was a positive, although statistically insignificant trend, toward influenza vaccine compliance in subjects offered a raffle ticket or raffle ticket in addition to the educational letter (43.3%), as compared
Discussion
The difficulty of the raffle drawing entry process may have prevented a number of individuals from participating. To enter the raffle, subjects were required to save the ticket mailed to their home, remember to bring it with them at time of influenza administration, then return it by interoffice mail in a preaddressed envelope we provided. Not only may there have been too many steps in this process, but the indication that the envelope should be sent by interoffice and not regular postal mail
Summary
This study provides no evidence that a mailed educational letter and/or a single large raffle prize will improve the number of HCW receiving influenza vaccination. Further studies may help determine which interventions are needed to achieve adequate compliance.
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