Time for Healthcare Employers to Counsel Hospital Staff about the Importance of Flu Shots

Flu season begins October 1st, lasts until May and peaks in the coldest months of the year, December and January, respectively. Hospitals are advertising the availability of flu shots in earnest, urging healthcare workers to get vaccinated at participating clinics.

Healthcare Staffing Employers across America wants its employees to know that vaccination supplies for the 2010/2011 influenza season are in abundance this year—for everyone and not just high risk groups; in 2009, the vaccine for the H1NI swine flu virus was in short supply and worried healthcare officials should a pandemic occur.

In response to this concern, New York was the first state in the U.S. to require healthcare workers to be vaccinated; the September 2009 mandate stuck, and, to date, healthcare employers in many states require hospital staff to get a flu shot by a certain date or risk termination.

Reasons cited by hospital staff for refusing the vaccine run the gambit from religious to fear of adverse effects; hospital officials argue that the flu shot, developed by the Center for Disease Control, is a life saving measure, to be looked at like immunizations against measles, mumps and rubella. Some healthcare employers offer an alternative: wearing a surgical mask, or indicating vaccination status on I.D. badges; the hope being that, as flu season gets underway, more healthcare workers voluntarily roll up their sleeves.

Statistics Support Vaccination

The 2010/2011 influenza vaccine includes the H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine and can reduce the risk of getting influenza by 70% to 80%; it’s the best way to guard against an illness that contributes to as many as 36,000 deaths in this country each year.

Healthcare employers who use Candidate Direct Marketplace urge their employees to  have flu facts, as well as flu shot hospital requirements for nursing employment. We encourage all  healthcare professionals have received a healthy dose of what’s good for the healthcare community!