Flu Vaccine, enough already!

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Specializes in Medsurg, Homecare, Infusion, Psych/Detox.

Yes, we are in flu season. And it seems you can't go anywhere without being bombarded/enticed to get the flu vaccine. A lot of times scare tactics are used also. They tried making it mandatory for nurses last season but that failed, thank goodness. Then a friend went to a job interview, and a condition of employment was that she had to get the flu vaccine even though she did not want it.

Yet recently, a healthcare employer (I have declined to identify) went as far as to offer employees who get the flu vaccine (at work), entry into a raffle for a hot electronic gadget. I just think its too much. People already know about the flu vaccine and have made an educated decision about whether they want it or not. Flu vaccines have become extremely commercialized, which leads me to conclude that a financial windfall is being made somewhere. Just sayin...

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Specializes in ER, SANE, Home Health, Forensic.

I am starting to feel the same way about breast cancer pink products...

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Specializes in Critical Care.

People also already know about hand hygiene and using gloves yet hospitals continue to "bombard" their staff about the proper use of each, not to make money but to protect patients.

I believe that just as hospitals have the right to require proper hand hygiene to protect patients, they also have the right to set other requirements for the purpose of ensuring patient safety.

I'm not sure how hospitals make money off of mandatory flu vaccines any more than they make money off of requiring staff to wear gloves and use gel, they typically provide all these things for free making it more likely to cost the hospital money that it is to somehow bring in revenue.

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Specializes in New PACU RN.

We were just told that if we didn't get the flu shot and called in sick we would not get paid. I can't believe they are getting away with this.

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Specializes in Medical Surgical-Oncology.

Tell me about it. I got accepted into the nursing program and for orientation last week one of the school's doctors came to speak to the students. She told us that we have to get the flu vaccine, which I am completely against. She said that we won't be allowed to start our clinicals if we don't get it. I have never gotten a flu vaccine in my life and now I have to get one according to this doctor. However, it says nothing about needing the flu vaccine in the paperwork that I received from the university that list the immunizations.....:confused:

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Since you can still get mildly ill and transmit flu even if you've been vaccinated (I believe you can be contagious even before prodrome) that this has less to do with safety to patients, but more to do with hospitals not wanting to have to deal as much with losing swaths of staff for upwards of a week at a time during heavy flu seasons.

Especially where I work, sick staff are often filled in with registry as we're scheduled pretty thin and tight.

Encouraging your employees not to be missing work by staying healthy isn't a new idea..think of employer incentives on doing things like eating healthy snacks or losing weight. This is along the same vein.

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Specializes in ICU, Telemetry.

When I was a kid (dad was in the Army), it was nothing to see the base doc and a couple of nurses come in, line up everybody in the place, and give us vaccinations. Against what, I don't know, but it happened all the time. We had some of "those" kind of places on one base, the scary areas where you didn't go anywhere near, didn't even act like you knew that area of the base was on the planet, because they were doing God knows what in those non-existant labs. I always wondered if they were giving us shots just in case something from the lab escaped into the wild....my dad worked with nukes, we were in the middle of the Cold War living on a Level 1, First Strike target, and we knew without a doubt if WWIII ever started, we were going to be the first civilian casualties.

So a flu shot really doesn't even show up on my radar...

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Personally, I'd just like to let my immune system do what it was meant to do: fight disease. Immunization is great for constant contagions like polio, diphtheria, etc, or for those who are pathologically susceptible; but for an ever-evolving virus such as flu please just let my otherwise healthy and normal immune system handle it naturally. On the off chance I die you can laugh at me then. Until that happens, keep your commercialized nonsense to yourself and stop making me choose between my job and an unnecessary shot.

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Specializes in Oncology/Haemetology/HIV.
Tell me about it. I got accepted into the nursing program and for orientation last week one of the school's doctors came to speak to the students. She told us that we have to get the flu vaccine, which I am completely against. She said that we won't be allowed to start our clinicals if we don't get it. I have never gotten a flu vaccine in my life and now I have to get one according to this doctor. However, it says nothing about needing the flu vaccine in the paperwork that I received from the university that list the immunizations.....:confused:

The reason is that in all likelihood it is not the university that requires it, it is the clinical sites. And it may have been added after the University paperwork was done.

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Specializes in Oncology/Haemetology/HIV.
When I was a kid (dad was in the Army), it was nothing to see the base doc and a couple of nurses come in, line up everybody in the place, and give us vaccinations. Against what, I don't know, but it happened all the time. We had some of "those" kind of places on one base, the scary areas where you didn't go anywhere near, didn't even act like you knew that area of the base was on the planet, because they were doing God knows what in those non-existant labs. I always wondered if they were giving us shots just in case something from the lab escaped into the wild....my dad worked with nukes, we were in the middle of the Cold War living on a Level 1, First Strike target, and we knew without a doubt if WWIII ever started, we were going to be the first civilian casualties.

So a flu shot really doesn't even show up on my radar...

I am from the generation that you lined up in the school cafeteria, and everybody got a smallpox vaccination until you had the telltale scar. I have the vac card from the WHO, listing that it took times before I got the pock mark.

I didn't realize until recently that they had stopped doing that, and that people had such objections. When we went overseas, we alays had to get vaccinated.

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Specializes in PICU, Sedation/Radiology, PACU.

Employees getting the flu vaccine is a Joint Commission standard. Compliance is tracked and evaluted by JC. That's a big reason that hospitals are pushing it so hard.

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I never get flu shots, I never get my kids flu shots...except for last year, I decided we all would get them. Well, last year was the first year any of us had the flu and we all spent a week on tamiflu and out of school/work regardless. Coincidence? Maybe, but we won't be getting the shot again. Get it if you want, but don't force it on me.

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