Flu Shots

I was wandering around in various health care blogs and reading about social media and how it has changed Health Care and how it could be used to improve patient/clinician relationships....Then I saw the blog on "Health care Professions need to have the annual Flu shot" title and I had to stop and do a quick glance as this is a debate that goes on in the hospital that I work at...
Over a year ago I was helping to facilitate the go-live of our chemotherapy protocol based computer based program and it was while the H1N1 outbreak was going on....It was required that anyone who was in a patient care area had to be vaccinated...I ended up receiving 2 shots and one live nasal injection as the first 2 shots were "compromised"- didn't help that I hate needles to begin with....
This article talks about how we interact daily- patients, visitors, co-workers- and we should protect our selves as well as our patients.

The CDC is attempting to have over a 90% vaccination rate by the end of 2011 for Health care workers...and it goes on to give some research on why we should be vaccinated....The 3 reason is what truly caught my attention and is the reason I am commenting here....
1-Prevent Disease Spread to Patients- I agree and support the idea to become immunized if your job is at the bedside.
2-Decreases Health Care workers risk of Infection- I am ambivalent about this one...there have been multiple co-workers and myself included who have been feeling just fine and productive until we receive our flu shot. by the end of our 12 hour shift we are aching, chilling, having runny noses and low grade fevers- (We are Oncology RN's and take care of Immuncompromised patients ) and are sick for up to 3 or more days after....We also are talked to if we use too much of our sick time, call in 3 days in a row and must have an MD's release to be off or work or return to work...there have been years that I didn't take the shot and wasn't sick at all that year and then there are those years that I allow myself to be talked into receiving the vaccine and I end of being sick directly after as well as a few more times until summer is here.
3.Create HERD Immunity- I am sorry I didn't know that I was part of a herd as an RN...there could have been another way to describe the work climate and coworkers involved..
4.Prevent absenteeism of the workers in an outbreak
5. Set a good example on the importance of vaccinations...

we are currently attempting to comply with the Joint Commission standards for Flu Vaccinations hospital wide. Last year we were short of the mark for a multitude of reasons...one is we didn't receive the vaccine prior to the start of the JC acceptable start date. The Oncologist were not wanting the Oncology patients immunized while receiving chemotherapy treatment that required hospitalization- they wanted to wait until the patients were seen at the clinic as their counts would be stable. We pulled all patient data that was being collected for those patients who were admitted to the Oncology Service.

I guess that I was expecting a more in depth comment on how our immunization has impacted the care that we give to our patients as well as if staff immunization has improved/decreased hospital based outbreaks..

My First Blog

Hello,

This is my first attempt at "Blogging". I have been looking forward to this class since I started with the UC Davis Health Informatics Course last fall.

I am an RN with Kaiser Permanente NW Region here in Clackamas County, OR.
I have worked for Kaiser since 1987.

With this blog I hope to learn more about Health care/information on the Internet as well as increase my knowledge about the ever evolving internet.

I look forward to working with everyone over the next few months in our conversations.