Healthcare personnel influenza immunization rates have remained low, despite recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other leading healthcare organizations that all healthcare personnel receive annual flu vaccines. Experts say these levels are perilous. Increasing vaccination rates substantially improves patient safety, lowering flu deaths by 40 percent.
Three studies presented at the Fifth Decennial International Conference on Healthcare-Associated Infections in Atlanta examine ways to increase healthcare personnel vaccination rates through social networking, declination strategies and mandates.
"Immunization is one of the most important things that we as healthcare personnel can do to prevent the transmission of influenza and other diseases to our patients," said William Schaffner, MD, a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America's (IDSA) Board of Directors. "We owe it to our patients to get vaccinated. These studies are very helpful because they demonstrate strategies that work to effectively reach and vaccinate healthcare personnel."
Social Networks Help Researchers Understand Healthcare Personnel's Flu Vaccine Use
Epidemiologists and computer scientists at University of Iowa Health Care (UIHC) found that healthcare personnel are more likely to be vaccinated if their close contact co-workers, also referred to as neighbors in the study, are vaccinated. Researchers constructed a social network of hospital-based healthcare personnel as a proxy for social relationships to examine the impact of co-workers' vaccination status on the vaccine status of their neighbors. Researchers examined the level of contact individual healthcare personnel have with other healthcare personnel.
Over the two-year study period (2007-2008), Donald Curtis, a computer science graduate student in the university's Computational Epidemiology Research Group, constructed a social network of more than 6,500 healthcare personnel using data stripped of personal details to protect privacy from UIHC's electronic medical record system, including login time and location and vaccination status. When vaccination data was compared with login information, researchers were able to confirm the level of vaccinated neighbors for each individual.
Researchers found that unvaccinated healthcare personnel tended to be more isolated and have fewer vaccinated co-workers. By comparison, vaccinated healthcare personnel tend to have more interactions with co-workers and were more likely to be surrounded by more vaccinated co-workers. "These findings suggest a strong association between higher vaccination rates and healthcare personnel who work closely with other healthcare personnel," said Philip Polgreen, MD, assistant professor at University of Iowa Health Care.
The data hold implications for hospital-based flu vaccination campaign strategies specifically targeting healthcare personnel with a history of non-vaccination.
"It appears that vaccination campaigns consistently fail to influence a small cohort of healthcare personnel who are measurably more isolated from other healthcare personnel. Persistently unvaccinated healthcare personnel may benefit from better targeted vaccination campaigns," said Polgreen.
