It’s been shown that flu shots reduce the spread and severity of influenza. But despite CDC guidelines recommending that all health care professionals receive both the seasonal and H1N1 influenza vaccine, a significant number of physicians and nurses plan to decline the shots.
Data from the CDC show that only 40 percent of health care workers receive the seasonal flu vaccine. Reasons include fear of side effects, including the perception that the dead virus contained in the vaccine can cause disease. This is false, as is the belief that physicians and nurses are “too healthy” to become infected.
A UK survey says that 50 percent of doctors and a third of nurses do not plan on taking the H1N1 vaccine. Some point to the 1976 incident where a swine flu vaccine caused Guillain-Barre Syndrome in 500 people. Experts now believe contamination during the manufacturing process was to blame, and the World Health Organization has said that vaccine safety has since markedly improved.
Consider that there are 11 million health care workers in the United States. Also consider that at current rates of vaccination, hundreds of thousands of health care workers could potentially transmit the virus to patients under normal flu patterns. This is now compounded by the specter of the H1N1 virus.
We owe it to our patients to get vaccinated this flu season.
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Related posts:
- AMA: How to prepare for seasonal and H1N1 influenza
- Op-ed: Reasons why health care workers need to receive the H1N1 flu vaccine
- Does the seasonal flu vaccine offer protection against H1N1 influenza?
- What having the H1N1 flu feels like
- Flu and H1N1 influenza vaccine recommendations for doctors and health care workers
- 2009 H1N1 influenza – the pandemic continues
- Is the seasonal flu vaccine associated with H1N1 pandemic influenza?
{ 7 comments }
With time one learns to take the CDC’s confident proclamations with a grain of salt . . . to look at the data and consult one’s experience and make one’s own decision.
What if you’ve already had H1N1? Do you still need the vaccine?
I would be afraid of the h1n1 vaccine, but luckily my doctor is not. My doctor is so nervous she is already planning to close her office if this is a epidemic flu.
Let’s just all send each other good thoughts that we don’t get h1n1,
Close her office in a flu epidemic??
A medical doctor??
In the old days, doctors who fled plague struck cities got a cold welcome if they tried to return afterwards.
Although I can’t say that I blame them for conditions with extremely high fatality rates–every man (or woman) must decide the limits of their courage and commitment for themselves. But this isn’t the Black Death we are talking about.
Unless she is in a non-critical specialty and can’t do anything for flu victims or is herself in a high risk group for complications, then it makes no sense.
While I agree that this isn’t “the Black Death” it may just turn out to be far more serious than many expect. Doc Stone, could you please state the case fatality rate for H1N1 as well as how you’ve determined it?
daisy according to a cdc news conference in late september by dr. freiden, if you’ve have lab confirmed h1n1 then you don’t need it. however, according to that same news conference, obviously most URIs this year have not been h1n1, so most people who think they have gotten h1n1 are wrong. the cdc is recommending that you get the vaccine, unless you are 100% positive you had h1n1 because of a confirmatory lab test (pcr, not rapid flu)
i personally have seen a huge spike in rapid flu A + cases, >90% of which i’m assuming are h1n1 according to epidemiology, though i can’t confirm it in my own patient population. that spike has leveled off and is coming down, this week has not been nearly as busy as the past few weeks. so by the time the vaccine gets here, i’m not sure it’s going to do any good because h1n1 will probably be done with the community.
So, as a patient, I go to my primary care physician. I ask her if she plans on getting the seasonal and/or the H1N1 vaccine. She says she doesn’t plan on getting them. Seems the most rational thing for me to do is follow this trusted advisor’s lead and not get the vaccines either.
Where does that logic fail?
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