Will workers accept responsibility for shots?
March 1, 2008
Will workers accept responsibility for shots?
OSHA fact sheet warns of occupational risk
Here's a new spin on the campaign to convince health care workers to get the influenza vaccination: Do it for your own health.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has released a fact sheet on seasonal influenza vaccination that emphasizes the worker-safety aspect. OSHA states: "Employers have a duty to create a safe work environment. Encouraging influenza vaccination for their health care employees is one method of doing this. The current rate of influenza vaccination among health care workers is disappointing, and increasing this rate could significantly enhance health care worker safety and increase their productivity."
OSHA also notes that The Joint Commission has made health care worker vaccination a priority, and that "employees increase their risk of contracting the flu if they decide to decline vaccination."
"We consider it a form of personal protection for health care workers to receive the vaccine," says Patricia Bray, MD, MPH, acting director of OSHA's Office of Occupational Medicine. "Influenza is the most common cause of death from a vaccine-preventable disease in the United States."
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Are flu shots a matter of employee health? Some hospitals that use declination statements for the influenza vaccination have taken measures to take some of the negativity out of the process. At Erickson Retirement Communities in Silver Spring, MD, national medical director Craig D. Thorne, MD, MPH, created a single flu vaccine consent form that emphasizes education, rather than using a separate declination statement. The form stresses the importance of the flu vaccine to protect health care workers, their family, co-workers, and the patients or residents they care for. Employees may then check a box either stating "I will accept the influenza vaccine, as it is my responsibility" or "whether for personal or medical reasons, I choose not to accept the vaccine at this time." They also may indicate that they received the flu vaccine elsewhere; those numbers are counted in the overall vaccination rate. Thorne also implemented a program to bring flu vaccine to employees on the floors. Just by introducing that influenza form and encouraging mobile vaccine campaigns, they had seen a 78% increase in rates compared to last year, at press time, and they still were vaccinating. "In my experience, employee health programs that are positive in nature produce favorable results," says Thorne, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, both in Baltimore. Erickson has 20 sites around the country with some 11,000 employees, and many provide assisted living and nursing care as well as independent retirement living. Signing the declination form isn't mandatory, and Thorne isn't tracking which employees signed. Individual sites may require employees to sign the forms. For example, at Riderwood Village in Silver Spring, MD, those directly providing health care services for residents must complete the form, but they also receive a $5 voucher to the cafeteria when they sign the form. The bottom line, says Thorne: You have to balance the rights of the employee with the needs of the workplace, but education and convenience encourages workers to accept flu vaccines. |
Although healthy adults are usually not at high risk of complications from influenza, she notes that the vaccine has been shown to reduce rates of illness and complications of illness in the 18- to 63-year-old age group.
Hospital-based outbreaks also affect health care workers, Bray notes, although there are no data showing that health care workers have a higher risk of contracting influenza than the general population. "It just makes sense that a group that has a high exposure rate has a higher likelihood of contracting the illness," she says.
OSHA did not mention the issue of declination statements.
[Editor's note: The OSHA influenza vaccination fact sheet is available at www.osha.gov/Publications/seasonal-flu-factsheet.pdf.]
Here's a new spin on the campaign to convince health care workers to get the influenza vaccination: Do it for your own health.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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