People shouldn’t risk catching influenza from their nurse or doctor, experts agreed Thursday in giving their sternest advice yet to healthcare workers to get vaccinated against the virus.
The federal advisers who set the standards on vaccines approved their recommendation following studies that show nearly two-thirds of healthcare workers do not get the shots.
The new guidelines will make clear that healthcare workers need to be vaccinated every year and their employers must help them do it, said Dr. William Schaffner, chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
“We want to change the culture,” said Schaffner, who sat in on the joint meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and the Hospital Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee.
“They agreed to issue a joint recommendation which uses stronger language than either has ever used before affirming the importance of healthcare workers getting vaccinated.”
64 percent skip flu shots
Schaffner, a liaison member of ACIP, helped write a report that found 64 percent of U.S. health care workers do not get vaccinated against influenza, a disease that kills at least 36,000 Americans a year. Hospital staff are known to spread the flu virus.
People infected with influenza can spread the virus for up to five days before they feel ill and up to half of all infected people may have no obvious symptoms at all.
The flu vaccine is recommended for infants aged 6 months to two years, people over 50, and people with certain conditions that affect their immune systems. It is also recommended for anyone in close contact with such people, who are more at risk of death or serious illness from flu.
That includes health care workers, Schaffner said.
“They see themselves as being hale and hearty and not being at risk,” he said in a telephone interview.
“These recommendations make clear that this is for the benefit of their patients. Since this is not for their own personal benefit but for patient health and safety it becomes clearly an institutional responsibility, and thus the institutions, in even stronger language, are charged with putting on effective programs that both education health care workers and make the vaccine available to them free of charge.”