Rules intended to maximize sanitation and avoid the spread of infections and disease are prevalent in hospitals.
And yet, most hospitals don't require their employees to get flu shots, according to a survey from a team of University of Michigan researchers. The poll was conducted in 2013, but was only recently reported in a new paper published in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, a medical journal.
When the survey was conducted, just under 43 percent of the infection preventionists at 386 hospitals said that their hospital currently required flu shots for staff. However, an additional 10 percent said their hospital would begin to require the shot for the next flu season. That means it is likely that, two years later, a majority of hospitals are making their doctors, nurses and administrative employees get the vaccines that they keep telling patients they need to get.
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The required vaccination rate at Veterans Administration hospitals was particularly low: Only 1.3 percent. But since the survey was conducted, the agency has put in place plans to achieve universal vaccination by 2020, according to a University of Michigan news release announcing the results of the study.
At VA hospitals, opposition from employee unions was cited by just over a quarter of surveyed staff in explaining the lack of requirement. Overall, union objections to mandatory shots were cited by 15 percent of hospital prevention specialists. But 22 percent simply said that hospital administration would not impose the requirement.
To be clear, many hospitals are urging staff to get shots, even if they aren't requiring it. Twenty-two percent of surveyed staff at non-VA hospitals said that staff is "highly encouraged" to get vaccinated.
But requiring them would be even better, suggested M. Todd Greene, Ph.D., a research investigator at the University of Michigan and the VA and the lead author of the study.
"Mandated vaccinations are not a simple panacea and will continue to be met with challenges and opposition for numerous reasons," he said. "But our findings suggest that opportunities remain for many health care organizations to require vaccination of their staff to increase coverage rates."
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