News

Occupational health in the healthcare environment sounds simple -- find ways to reduce the transmission of infections from patients to healthcare personnel and from personnel to patients, according to a document from the CDC's HICPAC in 1998. But more than a decade later, the job has become increasingly complex, as the hazards that healthcare workers face have escalated. Sharps injuries, bloodborne pathogen exposure, latex allergies, respiratory exposure -- these are just a few of the numerous hazards healthcare workers face daily.

Despite recommendations in numerous guidelines and the prevalence of high-risk conditions, healthcare workers still exhibit low rates of PPE use, and the National Academies (2008) says that "assessments of the explanations for noncompliance and the solutions to these issues need to focus beyond the individual and address the institutional issues that prevent, allow or even favor non-compliance."

Experts say that vaccination of healthcare workers against influenza is one of the key ways to protect patients and boost occupational health, yet annually, infection preventionists engage in a battle of persuasion and politics to get better compliance rates at their institutions. One of the challenges is ensuring that healthcare workers are not working while being infected with the influenza virus; during outbreaks in healthcare settings, laboratory-confirmed influenza attack rates have been documented to be as high as 51 percent. Studies have demonstrated that influenza vaccination of healthcare personnel has decrease infection rates, and a growing body of evidence has shown that vaccination can improve patient outcomes in healthcare settings. While many facilities are requiring vaccination as a condition of employment, others are finding creative ways to get healthcare workers to do what's right while protecting the individual's right to choose. We look at three different approaches recently undertaken and described in the literature.

ICT spoke to William Schaffner, MD, chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt Medical School in Nashville, Tenn., about lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, non-compliance with flu-prevention measures, and other pertinent issues related to healthcare worker vaccination against seasonal influenza.