Family Practice and Palliative Care (Aug 2019)
Approaches of the healthcare staff in a tertiary healthcare service providing hospital for seasonal influenza vaccination
Abstract
Introduction: Seasonal influenza hadmany epidemics and pandemics throughout history and caused millions of peoplegetting sick with severer progress and even death in the risk group. Having theinfluenza vaccination is essential for healthcare staff to protect their healthas well as other individuals of the society. The present study aimed todetermine the approaches of all healthcare personnel and candidates in RizeTraining and Research Hospital providing tertiary healthcare services and toanalyze their causes for not having the vaccination.Methods: The present cross-sectionalresearch was carried out in Rize (Turkey). A questionnaire applied to 898volunteers among 2200 hospital staff. Results: It was detectedthat the median age of the participants is 25 years; 61.0% of the participantsare female; 59.8% of them are single; 69.8% do not have any children and 38.0%have a graduate degree. The rate of having vaccination once within lifetime wasdetected as 41.6% and the highest rate was observed in the physician groupwhereas the lowest rate was observed in the nursing student group. The causesfor avoiding to have the vaccination included the considerations about theineffectiveness of the vaccination, having influenza and the delay of arrivalof the vaccination to the hospital. However, the rate of having vaccination wasdetermined as 2.6% within all healthcare staff for this year. The majority ofthe participants who had the vaccination consisted of the nurses who considerthemselves within the risk group. Conclusions: A significantdecrease was detected in the vaccination rates of the healthcare staff whencompared with previous years. The awareness should be increased to increase thevaccination rates. For this purpose, training should be organized, and thesustainability of such training should be provided.
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