Flu Shot: Does It Help You?

I have gotten the flu shot the last several years. I have never had a reaction to the flu shot NOR have gotten the flu since then.

It is recommended that health care professionals get the flu vaccine.

Many people each year die of the flu.

Stephanie RN

I never get a flu shot. I haven't had the flu since my first year of nursing school (90 or 91) and before that I can't remember The last one. Now watch i'll catch it this year becuase I talked about it.

The one year I didn't get a flu shot I got the flu, and it was hell. So now I always get the flu shot, not just for me but also for my patients.

I've never had a reaction, so it's not my place to judge, and for those who do get a reaction and who's immune systems are good enough to survive catching the flu, I agree to avoiding the flu shot.

I am, However, very skeptical when people say they got the flu shot but caught the flu anyway. I know I'm preaching to the choir but some people mistake the common cold as the flu. It makes me uncomfortable knowing that so many healthcare providers are against the flu shot, but what I'm hoping is that these people aren't telling their elderly patients or pediatric patients that the flu shot is evil. For those who are at high risk, the danger related to the flu is much greater than the reaction to the vaccine.

Flu Expert Calls For

Vaccination for Healthcare Workers

Johns Hopkins senior hospital epidemiologist and flu expert is calling for mandatory vaccination of all healthcare workers as the best means of protecting patients and hospital staff from widespread outbreaks of the viral illness. Studies by other U.S. researchers show that voluntary vaccination programs dont do the job and that each year, nearly 40,000 Americans die from influenza, many of them elderly or ill.

In an editorial published in the Nov. 9 online edition of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, Trish Perl, MD, MSc, concludes that mass vaccination policies are required to prevent patients from accidentally contracting the virus directly from an infected medical staff worker or indirectly from other patients or visitors via medical staff.

Previous research from Hopkins showed that annual flu shots have been almost 88 percent effective at reducing the risk of flu infection and that they reduced by one-half the number of deaths among hospital patients from the disease.

Staff surveys from other hospitals have shown that the most common reason cited for not getting a vaccination is a lack of time (47 percent). Surprisingly, a remarkably high number of staff, more than 30 percent, believed they could catch influenza from the vaccine itself, which is false