AIBU re Flu Jab for healthcare professionals

[Libitina]

My Trust is now asking all managers to provide a list of who has had the jab and who hasn't in their department? They have also stated that if we have not had the jab and then contract flu, we will be invited to speak to the chief nurse of the Trust. They offer prize draws as an incentive, use peer pressure to get people to comply and blackmail by stating the sequin payment the Trust will get for a specific percentage of staff being innoculated will "pay for X amount of nurses" that I know we will never actually see.


AIBU to tell them to mind their own business?

[heebiejeebie]

With a lot of healthcare targets you still get the points if you have recorded a refusal e.g. Target is 80% screening - you get the money if 70% screened and 10% have said no thank you. I guess the common ground is that you should be allowed to conscientiously object - without having to explain your personal reasons - but the apathetic should be chased up.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

It's more the heavy handed management approach I have an issue with. Especially at the moment.

Heavy handed, accusatory management over what is essentially a personal medical choice runs the risk of alienating a workforce that are already on the verge of breaking point and pushing staff morale lower than it already is.

Catch more flies with honey, and all that.

[hollinhurst84]

I e had flu once. Never again thank you, I was there at the front of the queue for my jab! But I'm also immunosuppressed so needed to have it despite of work

[heebiejeebie]

But rafal, it goes beyond the personal because an unvaccinated work forcecarries risk for the vulnerable. Washing my hands all the time gives me horrible dermatitis, but it's not OK for me to touch 20 patients without decontaminating in between. My profession carries an obligation to consider other people's needs.

[grannytomine]

FallenMadonna, I hope your treatment goes well. I also hope the NHS staff looking after you are responsible and won't risk your health.

[Rooster44]

Why isn't immunisation of children compulsory then to enhance herd protection amongst the population? I know a fair few mums who won't immunise despite all the evidence to do so

[Slightlyperturbedowlagain]

It's more the heavy handed management approach I have an issue with. Especially at the moment.
This ^^
It's bad enough NHS staff being paid a relative pittance for often highly -skilled work, plus the unsocial hours and relentless under-staffing, without being treated like that.
I totally believe in flu vaccines, would have it myself if I still worked for the NHS and have had full-blown flu twice in 20 years so know how shit it is. And my DC has had the flu spray at school. But honestly it's that sort of pressure that gets people's back up. Why not have a few educational sessions/ stands showing data and case studies to demonstrate the benefits? (and a free coffee too doesn't ever go amiss)

[Slightlyperturbedowlagain]

(Also I've met a few oddly anti-vax nurses in my time due to the front-row seats they get to see the influences of 'big pharma' and that sort of pressure plays right into the hands of the conspiracy-theorists)

[Mrsmorton]

I agree with trifle and perturbed. I always refused the jab when I was doing clinical work. Incentivisation and coercion is not conducive to valid consent and trusts are being incredibly unfair. They could try to improve patient safety by addressing staffing levels and so on. It seems picking on their workers is the lower hanging fruit.

[FallenMadonnawiththeBadBoobies]

Mrsmorton, whilst I agree wholeheartedly with having more NHS staff, paying them well, etc, I fail to see how this would help chemo patients dealing with those staff who are nursing the flu bug.

Are you willing to say why you always refused the flu jab?

Thank you Granny for your best wishes.

[heebiejeebie]

Actually, I think that all frontline NHS staff who wield a needle are already compelled to have Hep B vaccination. Is that right? I've always had to prove immunity when working for a new trust. So everyone has already signed up to the idea that they need to have a medical procedure for the greater good?

[specialsubject]

Nothing is risk free. You have a terminal illness called life.

It is about reducing risk.

[Mrsmorton]

Several reasons tbh, the two biggies... I worked with a very low risk population and when I was (essentially) forced to have an additional TB jab (after already having had 2) I developed an incredibly painful and persistent abscess which caused permanent scarring.

Since then, occupational health's opinion of what is "in my best interests" doesn't really interest me.

But I see your side of the argument totally and I've been jabbed to the hilt with everything else. This is just a step too far for me and the coercion makes it more so if I'm honest.

[Pseudonym99]

They're acting illegally. If you compiled such lists of your patients you would be struck off. I'd be threatening to report anyone who passes such information about me to their professional bodies.

[RhodaBorrocks]

I've had my jab. I'm NHS and have also had a transplant so my immune system is shot. I can't have live vaccines now, but I can have attenuated vaccines like the flu vaccine. I'm glad of that. I caught a cold a month ago and developed a chest infection - I'm still coughing uncontrollably now. Flu could easily kill me.

There is a CQUIN for uptake, but just because the payment could pay for X nurses doesn't mean that's how the payment would actually be spent. As a PP has said, it just means they wouldn't have to make cuts elsewhere. Case in point - I regularly use a similar analogy in training - "If we do X we can reduce lost income to the value X, which would pay for X band 5 nurses for a year." For many staff, talking about such massive budgets can be very abstract and it's better to put things in more tangible terms, it actually helps them to understand why there are such targets and requirements.

We have a prize for the department with the highest return rate on the staff survey, but not for getting the flu jab. Technically OH should have confidential records on who has had a jab and they should be able to pull a list from that without asking managers. That's how they calculate which team gets the staff survey prize at our trust and they only say how many in the team, or what percentage of the team completed it, the data is all anonymised. It's far more secure to analyse anonymous data (I do it daily with anonymised patient data) than ask for personal information to be submitted through potentially unsafe systems (lots of cyber attacks happening at the moment).

[HicDraconis]

I had to have HepB and BCG vaccinations when I started working for the NHS. Compulsory or no contract and no job - I had the jabs. I would have wanted them anyway for my own protection let alone my patients'.

The flu jab is a little more complex - there are side effects, it isn't always effective, they are guessing at which strains are going to be most prevalent and don't always get it right (so the mix of strains in the jab isn't necessarily the flu virus strain that will do the rounds a month or so later) so it is more of a risk/benefit assessment.

I also object to the heavy handed tactics taken to try and force HCP to have a medical intervention like this. We are also offered a free coffee at the canteen with every jab and we are required to sign a form stating why we have not received it if we decline it. I signed the form stating merely that I was not prepared to have my medical choices dictated to me by hospital managers.

[StStrattersOfMN]

Stratters here (so my name bolds)

For those of you asking, I had the flu jab last year (asthmatic so always had it). I had a really bad reaction to it, and was bluelighted to hospital from the GP's. Since then, my asthma, which had never really caused problems - literally 2 visits to A&E in my life, with no admissions, has become Severe Brittle Asthma. I've had 11 admissions, including ITU, am now under the care of the Biomed Research team at Glenfield, and on permanent oral steroids. I have a blue badge, can barely get found my house, and have probably been to the top floor (4 storey house) a handful of times.

I've also developed severe allergies, have had to rehome ALL our animals apart from Mouse (small bald dog that showers daily), have a restricted food diet due to allergies, and am contact anaphylactic to dairy.

It is in my medical records in black and white that this was all caused by the flu jab. I am not the only one this has happened to, I know of at least one other MNer, and my consultant has others in his care. I am not allowed the flu jab any more, and any other vaccinations have to be done as an inpatient. My consultant says that nobody with allergies should have it.

Having said all that. If that's wha the vac did, catching it last year probably would have killed me (cytokine storm).

If you've no allergies, get the jab. If you have allergies, get the jab. My reaction wax extreme, and one in millions. Flu still kills more people. Flu is more deadly than a jab.

[heebiejeebie]

Pseudonym 99 - could you expand?

[heebiejeebie]

Stratters hypoallergenic

[vdbfamily]

I am an NHS worker. My manager refused the jab and has just had 2 weeks off with flu. I am not sure what will happen now, I guess Occ Health will want to speak to them and I am guessing from the description of how ill they were that they might have the jab next year! It is not just to protect the people we work with, it is to stop the NHS staff missing weeks of work too.

[vdbfamily]

I have been told we have to report numbers, not names, so they can see how close they get to the target.

[StStrattersOfMN]

Oh and I still took DD2 to get her flu jab this year. She's 19, so it's entirely her choice, but we talked it over, and she decided to still have it.

[Teapot13]

In at least one NYC teaching hospital I have attended the staff that has not had the flu vaccine has to wear surgical masks. I have no idea how it works otherwise -- whether they are pressured, etc.

But in our state you need to be up to date on vaccines to register for public school. I assume there are medical exemptions, although not philosophical. Other states allow philosophical reasons for not vaccinating. There was a news story this year about parents in CA (lower vaccine uptake) whose son was in remission from leukemia and they wanted him segregated from unvaccinated children. Don't know what happened in the end.

[DarkNanny]

My body my right to choose isn't it ?

[CherryChasingDotMuncher]

I work in the NHS and think it's bloody irresponsible for frontline staff to not get the flu jab.

However I am even more against people being forced to do things with heir body they don't want to do.

I also thought the CQUIN money was ringfenced for health and wellbeing initiatives? So nurses wouldn't be employed off the back of it? And anyway the funding is "only" £372k - even if more nurses were employed (don't know about you OP but in my Trust the shortage of nurses is nothing to do with finances, we have the money just no one wants to be a nurse!) it really wouldn't go very far.