Massachusetts Nurses- Flu Mandate

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Specializes in Pediatrics, Community Health, School Health.

How is your compliance for the flu vaccine?  Our numbers are pretty abysmal.  We have a significant number of in person students and more coming back in January.  Many parents are claiming religious exemptions, but have yet to return the required paperwork that goes along with that.  It's going to be super fun calling parents and sending home their kids in January when they all try to comeback to school without their vaccine.  I am most annoyed because we had flu clinics at every school and have been telling them about this since Gov. Baker mandated it.

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Specializes in School nursing.

I was just on a call earlier this week that hints that state may actually be backing off somewhat on this mandate. We may get more details by Friday. 

But ours are overall actually pretty good. But still more families having issues with flu shot vs any other vaccine. I've been holding back on my state reporting as late as I can because of it. 

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Specializes in pediatrics, school nursing.

I'm only at around 25% but I think that is because families aren't used to having to tell us if they've gotten the flu shot. I often think a family doesn't do the flu shot and then I get their 4th grade physical & imms and it turns out they've gotten it yearly, but just never bothered to tell us! 

Of note, I don't think we're supposed to exclude students for missing a flu vaccine until the beginning of March... They talked about a 60 day grace period in the order... I wonder what they're going to say on the DPH call on Friday AM!

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Specializes in School nursing.
Just now, k1p1ssk said:

I wonder what they're going to say on the DPH call on Friday AM!

You and me both! My school head got wind that they may relax a bit because they "realized how busy school nurses are" and ended that statement to me with "they just realized?"

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Specializes in pediatrics, school nursing.
1 minute ago, JenTheSchoolRN said:

You and me both! My school head got wind that they may relax a bit because they "realized how busy school nurses are" and ended that statement to me with "they just realized?"

Watch, they're going to reinstate mandated screenings ?

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Specializes in School nursing.
Just now, k1p1ssk said:

Watch, they're going to reinstate mandated screenings ?

You shut your mouth right now! 

(But seriously. DESE would totally do that.)

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OMG NO Mandated screenings!!  ???. And where does it say they have a 60 day grace period?  I would love to see that.

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Specializes in pediatrics, school nursing.
5 hours ago, MHDNURSE said:

OMG NO Mandated screenings!!  ???. And where does it say they have a 60 day grace period?  I would love to see that.

https://www.mass.gov/doc/guidance-on-selected-school-health-regulations-during-the-covid-19-public-health-emergency/download

At the bottom of that document! And even though it says 60 days from start of school year, I think that's in reference to other vaccine requirements, because if they aren't requiring the flu vaccine until december 31st, then I don't think you can reasonably exclude on November 1st....  If you have 60days from the beginning of the school year (when it is "required") to get an MMRV, then you should have 60days from when the flu vaccine is required as well... Maybe my interpretation is bad, but that's how our district is handling it...

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Specializes in ICU/community health/school nursing.

I cannot even get 10-15% of parents to give me their vaccine records with the state-required vaccines at the beginning of the year. But I wish y'all the best of luck. May the odds be in your favor!

I will add that this year we did a bunch of vaccine clinics and we did not have compliance until October.

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Specializes in School Nursing, Pediatrics.
On 12/16/2020 at 2:41 PM, k1p1ssk said:

Watch, they're going to reinstate mandated screenings ?

LOL, I hope not!

 

My school is about 50 % compliance, and my district (huge 26k kids) runs flu clinics every Friday and the numbers of people showing are decreasing! I totally hope they back off on this! I only have a handful of religious exemptions. Plus we are still remote, with some returning on Jan. 25 (high risk students only). This is insane, I have been working more and harder than if we were in school! Plus working for DPH doing MAVEN, and I teach a CNA class at our tech school! 

ALso, I wanted to add, if anyone has SNAP and you have access to MIIS, (if your district has set you up for this, if not ask them to), you can sync them and your immunizations will go in SNAP so you don't have to manually enter. Of course, The key is, your students name and the name in MIIS has to be the same and their pedi has to enter them.  I can help if anyone has questions. 

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Specializes in pediatrics, school nursing.

We're considering this; Our LBOH contact told us we can use CARES act money to pay for the initial "subscription" for this option (which I think is around $800), and then its just $50 per nurse per year after that, so we're scrambling to see if it's something we have CARES money left for this! 

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Specializes in School nursing.
16 hours ago, scuba nurse said:

 

ALso, I wanted to add, if anyone has SNAP and you have access to MIIS, (if your district has set you up for this, if not ask them to), you can sync them and your immunizations will go in SNAP so you don't have to manually enter. Of course, The key is, your students name and the name in MIIS has to be the same and their pedi has to enter them.  I can help if anyone has questions. 

Um, what?? I don't use SNAP (used to), I use School Brains, but my school is thinking of switching to PowerSchool and its health partner is SNAP. This is very, very awesome and something I am banking for a discussion with my (non-nurse) boss. 

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